


hello moon, it's me

by chaoticsandstorm



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Hospitalisation, Character Study, Colonialism, Complicated Relationships, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Firelord Zuko (Avatar), Gen, Imperialism, Mental Health Issues, Past Child Abuse, Post-War, Recovery, Relationship Study, Zuko (Avatar)-centric, again a warning for Azula's canon hospitalisation in later chapters, but he sure as hell doesn't understand WHY they love him so much, colonialism isn't heavily touched upon but it is a present theme so be careful, loving someone despite their flaws, not gonna lie this is a touching story for me, the people love Zuko and he loves them back, very briefly touched upon but be careful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:54:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25948420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticsandstorm/pseuds/chaoticsandstorm
Summary: "There a lot of things about Zuko that the servants ignore. He is half-way between skins now. He shed the old one and hasn’t grown into the new one, trapped between worlds and skins and identities. Some days he feels more like Li the war-child refugee than Zuko, the Fire Lord."Zuko attempts to lead his nation into peace, kicking and screaming in protest. He discovers what it means to survive a war- and a childhood- that no one ever wanted or expected him to.
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Mai & Zuko (Avatar), Zuko & The Fire Nation (Avatar)
Comments: 95
Kudos: 620
Collections: A:tla, Finished111





	1. sail away, away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> read the tags for warnings!  
> this fic focuses very heavily on Zuko's problems with food in relation to his guilt about the crimes of his nation. think of it as an extended metaphor except his problems with food are very literal.
> 
> again, TRIGGER WARNING for EATING DISORDERS

There are a lot of things Zuko thinks he doesn’t deserve.

Like honour. Like love. Like the loyalty of his citizens, because they shouldn’t trust a leader who spent months starving in filthy backwater towns in the Earth Kingdom, stealing and begging and fighting in dishonourable exile. Like praise.

Like food.

Zuko lived in the Earth Kingdom. Was a refugee there. Held jobs- if tea serving and theft count as jobs. He knows exactly how the Fire Nation exploits the territories it conquers, forcing people off its land and using it for agriculture, feeding an army that just keeps growing and seizing more land. The food that sits on his plate was likely the product of such places. There is a reason the Fire Nation has been able to advance as much as it has. Stealing the inventions of other nations, harbouring land and wealth, benefiting off a hundred years of colonisation and oppression. Thinking that his food came at the cost of the life of some Earth Kingdom peasant makes his stomach churn.

The servants fuss. Quietly, where they think he cannot see. They whisper in the hallways and have buried discussions about getting the cooks to make extra for him, so that when he refuses the first plate they have a second prepared, still fresh from the kitchens. They think the problem is with the cooking. The food. Not Zuko’s stomach rebelling against him at the thought of eating. Zuko tries arguing with them, but whenever he does some of the servants look close to tears, while others meet him with a measured gaze that says they see through his shit. He prefers the second. Still loathes it. He is _not_ his father, not Azula, no matter what the other nations whisper. Zuko doesn’t _like_ people being afraid of him and he doesn’t really care if they make a mistake or slip in court etiquette in his presence, or whatever it is they are so afraid of.

The courtiers murmur that Zuko has changed. He is not the little boy they scorned all those years ago, not the banished prince they mocked when they needed a good laugh. He is Firelord and he refuses to let his servants dress him and he pads around the hallways barefoot at night, sneaking with a paltry imitation of his dual dao that the guards graciously pretend to ignore. There a lot of things about Zuko that the servants ignore. His personal tailor has given up getting Zuko to wear some of the more pretentious ceremonial robes, instead clucking his tongue and adjusting what robes he does wear to be a little more formal, with heavy embroidery that makes Zuko feel less like an imposter. He still does, either way. He is half-way between skins now. He shed the old one and hasn’t grown into the new one, trapped between worlds and skins and identities. Some days he feels more like Li the war-child refugee than Zuko, the Firelord.

Point being, the servants bring Zuko feed three times a day. Hot food. Fresh food. Zuko would have given his left arm for this much food, and this _good_ food back in the Earth Kingdom. He stole money from noblemen at the start and still couldn’t afford even a third of what he has now. Part of him is kicking himself for letting it go to waste, but he just can’t eat it. There’s this paper that needs signing and that general needs an urgent response to his letter, and this Earth Kingdom city claims that Zuko’s retreating troops damaged his town even further, and Zuko hates it all. He has no time for things like food and sleep. This is his family’s legacy and it is his responsibility to fix. His nation. His problem.

His personal servant- Akari? he thinks, he never quite learned her name and feels bad for it- is quietly insistent that he eats. When he barely glances at the plates of rice and other foods that they bring, she sets an apple on his desk and refuses to budge until he eats it. Then she takes the core before he can throw it away for himself.

"Wait," he calls as she is leaving. She turns, eyebrow raised expectantly. Zuko kind of likes her. "Your name is Akari, right?"

She nods in assent. "The guards are Takahiro and Yasuko, Your Honour."

Zuko hates being address that way, has told his staff countless times to just call him Zuko. They recoiled in horror the first time he told them, and they have taken to ignoring his reminders. Akari is no different. She smiles gently, almost motherly at him, and tells him she prefers calling him by his title.

"It’s more respectful," she explains, and Zuko still doesn’t believe he is worthy of respect but allows it anyway.

She exits with a deep bow that Zuko itches to make her drop. She doesn’t stay bowed the whole trip back to the door, thank Agni, instead straightening after the appropriate length of time and walking back. At least _some_ of his words have gotten through, then.

He can feel the apple sitting heavily in his stomach, and frowns. It will slow him down. He thinks better on an empty stomach and can’t afford to be weighed down. Not now, with General Yamamoto fighting tooth and nail in the War Room for the retreat to be halted.

"We were winning the war," he argued. "All we have to do is resume the attack!"

Zuko tactfully refrained from pointing out that not only were they defeated in the war, their entire air fleet was taken out by two non-benders and one earthbender. In addition, Zuko himself participated in the invasion. He knows exactly how weak the Fire Nation’s defences were. No matter how the generals pretend otherwise, Zuko knows the Fire Nation’s resources were being stretched thin by the war. They were better off than the other nations, certainly, but Zuko passed one too many vendors complaining about food shortages and this and that supply being rationed to not have an idea of how much the Fire Nation was being impacted. The generals would rather lie to his face than admit the war effort may have collapsed in on itself, even without the Avatar.

Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose. There is General Yamamoto, but also Admiral Yasuo in the navy writing to say their fleet is being blockaded by Water Tribe ships that just. _Refuse_ to let them leave. Zuko asked Katara to write to her sister tribe to try and make them see sense. They’re retreating, after all, not leading another attack. Zuko wrote to Chief Arnook begging him to withdraw the blockade and let his men return home. It has been a long time for them. He knows about Princess Yue- was there on the day she died, saw the fury and the terror of the ocean itself- and tries pleading to the man to think of the Fire Nation children whose fathers are trapped in this stupid blockade. Violence is a cycle that just keeps spinning round and round. Zuko should know.

He doesn’t expect the letter to work. Hopes it will, but there is a reason he asked Katara to write as well. But Admiral Yasuo keeps sending him stupid demands that he be allowed to just blast his way through the Water Tribe savages. The admiral is a good man, Zuko knows, his letters are full of concern for his men and their morale during the blockade, stuck halfway across the world when the _war is over._ Admiral Yasuo isn’t stupid, either, no matter what the courtiers say about his mysterious loss in fortune. But Zuko digresses. These? Are the words of a stupid man. You can’t just _blow through a blockade_ when you’re trying to negotiate _peace._

He sighs again. The apple rises to his mind once more. Zuko can’t _think_ with food in his stomach. He’s too used to being hungry to think clearly when he’s not hungry or in pain, and if that thought is somehow depressing or unusual then Zuko firmly tells himself otherwise.

Zuko slowly shuffles the papers on his desk and looks around for any servants that might see. But no, they have all elected to leave him alone in his study. There are the two guards outside, of course, never mind that Zuko has probably faced more danger over four, five years than they have during their entire careers. He’s had _lightning_ shot at him. _Twice._ But people in the palace are super squicky about leaving him alone for some reason so he has at least two guards with him at all times.

( _Unless he dodges them_ , part of Zuko’s brain quietly suggests. He hisses back at it. _No. We can’t do that. It’s not- proper, for a Firelord._

 _It doesn’t stop you from wandering around at night,_ his brain points out. Zuko kind of hates his brain. He wishes it would shut up.)

He needs to get rid of the apple lodged in his stomach, making him feel bloated and nauseous even though he hasn’t really eaten much. So he takes the waste basket from underneath his desk and sets it next to him. It really isn’t designed to hold anything much heavier than paper, but Zuko has dumped so many files into it that it really doesn’t matter anymore. He forces himself to throw up the apple and doesn’t stop until he is choking on stomach acid. He straightens, wiping his mouth with the delicate sleeve of his robe. His tailor will kill him.

Zuko ties up the bin liner with a knot then sticks his head out the door.

"Hello," he tries awkwardly. The guards snap to attention. "Could you send someone for-"

He shakes the bag just a little, and one of the guards immediately takes it from him then peels off down the hallway. Leaving before Zuko can retract the request. He isn’t running but is a near thing. Zuko has never seen a walk that brisk before. The other guard turns impassive eyes to Zuko, clearly waiting to see if he had any more commands. Zuko wilts under that gaze.

“Er- there’s nothing else, Yasuko is it? Thank you,” Zuko tries.

Yasuko’s attention remains firmly on him. Zuko awkwardly shuffles back into his study, and Yasuko slides in front of him to open the door for him, then close it behind him. She doesn’t speak. Somehow Zuko feels even more chagrined for the lack of words. Like Yasuko knows her chastisement is already more than adequate and is satisfied.

He can hear when Takahiro comes back. Slightly breathless and with clanging armour plates, Zuko can make out the sound of him resuming his position by the door. Yasuko says something to him that Zuko can’t make out.

Then he flushes, ashamed of trying to eavesdrop on his own guards. He idly wonders if they saw the vomit in the bag. He tied it up, but it was only pale. The vomit could have shown through.

Zuko decides he doesn’t care. He isn’t doing anything wrong. He just didn’t want to eat, and then the apple was distracting him and making him feel sick whenever he thought about it. Besides, the apple was probably grown in someone’s orchard that the Fire Nation forced them to relinquish. _Feeding the troops takes priority,_ or some bullshit like that. He almost feels bad for throwing it up. It was crunchy and crispy and juice ran down his chin when he bit into it, and he remembers when he and uncle were first on the run and they found a wild apple tree with apples almost like that. He gorged himself on apples, then, eating to distract himself from the pain of his sister lying to him. _Again_. Uncle said a man needs his strength but Zuko doesn’t quite think he expected Zuko to eat as much as he did that day. He vomited it all up later but that was because it was too much, anyway. It wasn’t like now.

( _Not like what?_ Zuko wonders, and dismisses it.)

The apple was probably poisoned out of spite. It was a good thing he threw it up then. If it hadn’t been poison, then it could have been a needle hidden in the core. He took care eating it, small bites every few minutes or so while Akari watched him with crossed arms. But he still had to throw it up in the end. He just _can’t_ eat while he’s working. It doesn’t work for him. Zuko has reason and motivation and all of those are perfectly valid explanations for not eating, okay? He’s in control. He can stop whenever he wants.

Mai challenges this one day. She pushes a bowl of rice towards him with a focused expression he hasn’t seen since she yelled at Governor Huang for calling him weak last month.

“Eat,” she says.

Zuko stares at the rice like it has grown fangs and is prepared to bite him. He looks up at Mai. Her expression is unchanged. He sighs and moves the bowl closer to himself, then picks up his chopsticks.

He can eat. He can. He will prove to Mai that this is just a choice, nothing more. That he is still in control. All he has to do is eat a few mouthfuls of rice.

He moves his chopsticks towards the bowl, then wavers. His hand trembles. He sighs again and sets the chopsticks down, feeling frustrated for reasons he cannot explain. He doesn’t _want_ to eat. He doesn’t. Mai shouldn’t be making him. Why couldn’t she just leave him alone?

“Zuko, please eat,” Mai repeats, and he can hear the waver in her voice.

He swallows heavily and picks up some rice before he can back out. He brings it to his mouth then stops. Staring at the rice, its incongruous white grains, he feels his lungs constrict. This is his choice. He can do this. He is in control.

The rice touches his lips and he gags. He reflexively flings the chopsticks onto the table, clattering and falling off. The rice is scattered over the wooden table. The bowl of rice sits cooling. Zuko tries imagining eating it, feeling the texture of the rice in his mouth. Chewing and swallowing. He feels- disgust, mostly. Followed by nausea and a tidal wave of panic that threatens to drag him under. Zuko’s breaths come in short, shallow rasps that has Mai rising from her seat to place a hand on his shoulders.

“Come on Zuko,” she presses urgently. “Breathe with me.”

It is an eternity before he can get his breathing under control, and when he looks at Mai he sees panic in her eyes. He brings a hand to face and realises why. He is crying. He can taste the salt in his mouth.

Mai’s mouth tightens. “You can’t keep doing this Zuko. You need help.”

He can’t think of anything to say. I’m in control? This is my choice? It clearly isn’t. Mai’s little exercise has proven that and they both know it.

“I’m tired,” he mumbles, and Mai’s expression softens.

“I know you are.”

The rest goes unsaid. There are no need for words, between them. Their actions have always spoken louder than words.

Mai lets him place his head on her shoulder and doesn’t push him off. She gently rubs his back while a servant scurries in and silently removes the bowl of rice. Mai glares at the servant and the poor girl squeaks, a quick bow showing she understands what Mai is asking for. _Silence._ It would make Zuko look weak if it got out that he can’t even eat without crying or throwing up. The palace staff all know by now. The most they can do is contain it.

Mai lets him go once he is calm. She doesn’t ask him to eat and he doesn’t promise to do so. He isn’t her responsibility anymore. They broke up before the war then got back together after it and broke up again, because Mai realised they had grown apart and Zuko was too busy to even notice. Mai still visits, sometimes. He hates that her time has been spent watching him being pathetic over _eating,_ of all things. He knows that she doesn’t regret it. She has been in the palace for a month now, longer than usual. Long enough to hear the palace gossip about how the Firelord isn’t eating. Long enough to see him pass out at his desk.

She would have made a great Fire Lady one day; with the grace and nobility she conducts herself escorting Zuko to bed. Commanding the passing servants and guards into silence without having to say a word. It’s not for her, though. It never was. Mai is happier away from court politics and the snobbery of the upper class. She mostly stays on Kyoshi Island with Suki and Ty Lee. The three grew close after the war. Zuko doesn’t begrudge their happiness.

Mai is seeing someone too. A Kyoshi Islander. Zuko guesses a boy, from what little Mai has said, but wouldn’t be surprised if it was a girl either. Mai has always been inscrutable. She is happy, is the important thing.

Zuko would be lying if he said he didn’t still love her. He does, in a quiet way he isn’t sure will ever go away. She was his first love. She was something to return to in the Fire Nation that didn’t feel strange or alienating, and she never asked him to be something he was not. She understood that Zuko couldn’t be the same after his years in exile, just as Mai couldn’t be the same. She was his first kiss, his first everything. But he doesn’t miss their relationship. Their friendship feels right in a way that their fumbling, awkward attempts at romance never did. Mai feels the same, he knows. It is why he can let her rub his back and help him into bed, assured that what she feels is strictly platonic. Nothing more. Her Kyoshi Islander boyfriend must know that too, because he lets Mai go on her visits to her ex-boyfriend with nothing more than a smile and a call of _have fun!_

“Sleep,” Mai tells him. She takes his wrist in one hand. She could slit it in a heartbeat. Zuko would never see it coming. But she sits with military-straight posture next to his bed, one eye on the door, and he knows if she attacks someone tonight it will not be him. Despite the ever-present guards and his own abilities, he feels safer with her than he has since he was crowned.

He closes his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> like halfway through this chapter i lost track of whether i was supposed to be identifying the various ministers and advisers by their given names or family names and honestly i don’t know if i managed to fix everything. there’s Huang, surname, and Yasuo, given name, and it doesn’t help that ATLA itself just throws names into a bag then pulls them out at random. like what will we get today? Chinese name for a Water Tribe character? Japanese surname for an Earth Kingdom peasant’s given name? i’m tired, man


	2. i hear the walls cave in

Breakfast is a plate of beautifully arranged fruit slices coupled with a bowl of rice porridge that Zuko ignores. He gives it to Mai instead, who sighs but takes a few apple slices anyway. He has missed those judging sighs. It isn’t the palace without her.

The weight of last night presses down on them. The rice and the terror that seized him at the thought of eating will not be dropped or dismissed by Mai. Even if she leaves, he knows she will keep sending letters, and will likely make arrangements of some sort in the palace. She won’t forget. Zuko wishes she would.

But Mai does not press. She lets him skate by with only a few slices of fruit for breakfast, launching straight into his morning meetings. Mai remains by his side like a faithful shadow, leaving his side only once. He doesn’t know what she does during that time, but she returns with satisfaction dripping off her like a cat. A few minutes later, one of his officials returns with a frantic look in his eyes and a newfound determination to avoid looking directly at Zuko. Beside him, Mai smirks.

Spending the day with her confirms what he already thought he knew. Mai wasn’t happy in the palace when they were together. She brushed off courtiers and officials and spent her days bored, chin resting on her palm. She hated when Zuko brought up work or this or that issue.

 _I’m not one of your advisors,_ she would say with clear frustration. _I hate it when you treat me like one. I’m your_ girlfriend.

And Zuko would apologise and stop bringing issues to her, until Mai got tired of him staying up late trying to solve them and would intervene. The palace wasn’t good for her. Neither was Zuko, sometimes. Seeing her now after months away reaffirms that she made the right decision for herself in leaving. Mai is engaged in the meetings now because she knows she can walk away, meddling in issues to help Zuko while she can, because she knows it won’t be her problem when she goes back home.

Zuko is a little jealous of her. Sometimes when Mai leaves, he has half a mind to send her a letter asking if she would come back for him. Then she visits again, sooner or later, and Zuko is reminded that there is a reason they never got back together, and a reason Mai lives on Kysohi Island. Things are better this way. Zuko wouldn’t trade her friendship for the world.

He’s just lonely.

Lunch rolls around. Zuko is stuck in a meeting with the head of the agriculture department. He’s prattling on about harvest yields and if Zuko never hears the words _harvest yields_ again, it will be too soon. Mai is nearly falling asleep next to him. A new servant whose name Zuko hasn’t learned sets the plates by his elbow, then bows and exits.

Mai watches him out of the corner of her eye. Expectant. Zuko feels sick at the thought of eating during such an important meeting. He should really have taken a lunch break as expected of the Firelord, but it was too important to halt the meeting just so he could choke down some food.

Mai nudges the bowl closer to him and he frowns at her. He hates the thought of being unable to respond to the minister just because he stopped for a snack. While harvest yields and agriculture aren’t the most engaging of topics, it is what keeps his nation fed and healthy. If they cannot resolve this issue, then they are at risk of a hungry winter.

Zuko pointedly ignores her nudging and continues with the meeting. He isn’t sure if the minister has noticed their silent argument. If he has, he keeps his mouth shut. The palace is good at things like that.

After the meeting, Mai makes him eat a pear. He is growing steadily tired of her relentless encouragement to eat. He gives her the slip after his next meeting concludes, claiming he is going back to his study to sign some documents. Mai pauses, clearly sensing a lie, but Zuko uses his old Blue Spirit skills in dodging her dogged attempt to follow him. They are both rusty now. Mai could still slit a man’s throat without blinking, and Zuko remains one of only two people in the world to have successfully redirected lightning, but the war is over. There is no need to teeter on a knife’s edge balance between lethality and childhood.

Mai is slower with her time on Kyoshi, and Zuko has grown dull but not defeated. She tries following him around the corner but Zuko pulls himself up to the roof, up and out of sight before she can realise which direction he took. He watches her spin around, clearly weighing her options before her fists clench and she sighs.

“I know you’re watching, Zuko. Just – come back to me, okay? Have your little tantrum or whatever. Just come back when you’re done.”

It such a Mai way of saying _I’m here for you_ that he almost laughs. Instead, he watches her leave with quiet footsteps that still startle the servants. Zuko is grateful for Mai’s presence. He is. And he loves her and he’s happy that she came all the way here to support him just because she heard a rumour that he was unwell, but he needs a break from her endless worrying.

He sits on the roof under the moonlight and watches the guards on their patrols. There are weak links there, he thinks. It would be so easy to scale the wall and slip past them, then use _that_ particular rampart to move along the window ledges and into the hallway. But then, Zuko has been reliably informed that most of his feats should not be technically possible.

He’s not hiding from Mai. He isn’t. And the past few days have made him realise that if _Mai_ is reacting so strongly, then he must really have a problem. It’s just hard to think of himself after years of being told that he doesn’t matter.

What does Zuko _want?_ He wants peace. He wants the war to finally fucking end, instead of everyone trying to drag it on despite it being _over._ He wants to see his friends outside of peace negotiations. He-

He wants to not be alone. He wants his family. He has his honour, his throne, but the entire world distrusts him at best and hates him at worst, and Zuko is so tired of being the leader that nobody wants. The leader that nobody rooted for. They _need_ him, sure, because no one else wants to do the dirty work of trying to bring the Fire Nation to rest. Zuko wishes he was on the throne because they wanted him to be, because they believed in him the way no one ever has, and not because there were no better alternatives.

He was _worthless_ to everyone. The banished prince. The disgraced traitor. Now they expect him to eat these lavish meals and dress in silk again. _Silk,_ like he wasn’t a refugee who lived in the same tattered tunic for months upon end, like he didn’t spend three years budgeting for an entire crew, right down to the last copper because he couldn’t afford not to.

Zuko isn’t who he was. He isn’t who they expect him to be. He knows these people will turn their back on him at the earliest opportunity and that fucking _burns,_ okay, he knows that it hurts him. But peace is more important. He will eat once the war is finally over and his nation is back on track, when the rice he eats wasn’t grown from slavery, when every child in the Fire Nation can grow up assured that they won’t be drafted to die for the machinations of the throne.

 _What do you want, Zuko?_ they keep asking. This _is_ what he wants. He was nothing, but now he is something and he can lead, he can stop the war, he can _accomplish_ something. His family? He’ll never get that back. His friends are busy. What Zuko wants _(says he wants)_ is realistic, is attainable. An end to the war. Peace.

Zuko blinks away tears. He wipes his eyes with the tips of his fingers and stares at the moisture. Why is he crying? He’s- happy, he must be. He has to be. Mai is here. He is on the throne. His nation will be finally be able to rest soon, even though they’ll have to work harder than they ever have to get that rest. There is nothing else.

He’s tired. The thought rings through his head. Why not sleep? If Zuko doesn’t want to feel upset, he can just sleep. A reset. When he wakes, it will be time for another meeting, and he can throw his energy into that instead, rather than the father laying in the palace dungeons, or the sister who still refuses to talk, or the texture of food on his plate.

Yes. Sleep. Zuko proceeds to do exactly that.

“Where _were you_ ,” Mai yells in his ear. “Do you have any idea how worried you made everyone? Your servants were running everywhere trying to find you and half your ministers thought they would have to sit through yet _another_ coronation!”

“Sorry,” Zuko says meekly, siting with his hands tucked beneath his palms.

Mai sighs. She can’t stay mad at him for long. She never could. Even when she threw a scroll at his head and told him he was being an idiot, she saved his life shortly after instead of stepping aside.

He truly is regretful. He hadn’t meant to sleep on the rooftop for that long. Now he is running late for his meeting with War Minister Qin – an old favourite of his sister’s, this meeting is going to be a _nightmare_ – and Mai just keeps _talking._ He doesn’t have time to waste.

“Mai, I really need to go,” he tries, and Mai shoots him such a fierce glare he immediately shuts his mouth.

“Your meeting,” she informs him coolly. “Has been cancelled.”

He shoots from his chair. “ _What?_ Mai, that meeting is _important,_ Qin wants to approve forces marching through Earth Kingdom territory in the mountains and I’m trying to _stop_ him. You already know he thinks I’m a stupid replacement-“

“Because I’ve taken care of it,” Mai finishes. She crosses her arms and fixes him with those intense dark eyes of hers. “I spoke to Qin. He won’t be approving anything.”

Zuko’s heart sinks. “You know that won’t work.”

“No,” Mai confirms. She studies her nails. “I know Qin is only stalling until he can slip it under your nose. I saw a lot of Qin, in the old days with Azula. But guess what Zuko? If you don’t _sleep,_ and _eat,_ and actually take breaks sometimes, Qin is going to have all the time in the world to approve whatever he wants, because _you’ll be dead,_ Zuko.” Her eyes bore into his. “Do you understand that? You can’t fix anything if you keep going as you are.”

“That’s my problem.” Zuko looks away, jaw clenching. “I’m _fine,_ Mai. I need to go to my next meeting.”

He walks away. Mai lets him. This, he thinks, is another reason why they never worked. They are too similar. Self-contained, preferring isolation to vulnerability. Neither were willing to smash the other’s walls down in order to be let inside. It wasn’t worth the effort for them, too wrapped up in their own heads.

They aren’t kids anymore. Mai lives on Kyoshi with her own friends and her own lovers. Zuko lives with a palace full of people who hate them. Funny. They were both the same back then, broken children with uncaring parents, but Mai is the one who ended up happy. He tries not to resent her for it, or the sister in a Caldera hospital. They made their choices.

The ministers are surprised to see him. Even more surprised is Advisor Cheong, who drops into a bow so hastily that his topknot graces the floor. Technically he should be kowtowing in the presence of royalty, but Zuko is tired, and he is prepared to overlook it. Whatever. His ministers rarely ever bow to him and it is admirable for Advisor Cheong to try.

He sits. The ministers follow, staring at the exhausted teenager on the throne.

“Let us begin,” he says.

Advisor Cheong picks up the meeting agenda and clears his throat. “Due to the... _unexpected_ cancellation of War Minister Qin’s conference with Your Majesty, that leaves Admiral Yasuo’s fourth petition and Governor Chang’s troubles with Earth Kingdom militia…”

The negotiations are important work. There is the negotiations with the other nations, trying to convince them that the Fire Nation- that _Zuko_ \- is serious about peace. It’s hard, but somehow still easier than trying to convince his own nation that they can lay down and rest. The War Council is the worst. They insist they can reignite the war at any moment, just hear us out Firelord Zuko, we can win and show everyone what the Fire Nation is capable of-

 _Which,_ Zuko thinks to himself, _is exactly the problem._ They have already demonstrated, to great length, that the Fire Nation is capable of war and terror. But what of _peace?_ What of culture, of love? The things that make one human?

When Zuko was a lost prince wandering through portside towns like a ghost, they saw his red clothing and recoiled in disgust. _Monster,_ they whispered. _Ash-maker._ That word drifted alongside him until enough money passed through their palms, swayed by the universal language of greed. He was a child. They knew nothing of his history, his parentage. They saw golden eyes and _assumed._ The terrible thing is that they were right. Even as young as Zuko was, he knows there have been soldiers that young, or even younger, who participated in battle. In some of the atrocities.

Zuko heaves into a gardenia bush after the meeting, body reaching for food that is not there. He is empty. There is nothing left to give.

 _No,_ Zuko thinks wildly, consumed by a wave of terror. There is always more.

Mai joins him for dinner, still silent and seething but handing him the rice without comment. She watches him take his first spoonful, then his second. She sees him waver with the third, and presses green chilli flakes onto the spoon, returning it with a grim set to her jaw. It helps. The chilli overpowers the taste of the rice, making him focus less on the rice and more on the burn spreading through his mouth.

Then the burn fades, and Zuko is left with the clinging texture of rice.

“Why can’t I just be normal,” he tries asking Mai, swallowing heavily around the remnants of food. Mai’s eyes flit to his own, and Zuko realises with dawning horror that his eyes are watering.

His throat burns. He tries choking out something to Mai, to thank her for the chilli, for trying, to tell her to go home, then he thinks of the empty palace and being alone with his work and his vomit, and cries instead.

Mai holds him through it. She must be tired of this. Holding Zuko while he cries over food. He is tired of it too, tired of being sick, of being weak, of spending all his times in meetings or signing paperwork.

 _Sure, Aang,_ he said. _I can bring peace to the Fire Nation. I can get everyone to work together._

Like an _idiot._ This is too much for Zuko. Why did he decide he was the one who could do this? Everyone expects both everything and nothing from him. He was the failure. The traitor. The weakling. Now he is the only person working to ease the Fire Nation into a world without war, and the world into the idea of a Fire Nation that does more than just destroy things.

Zuko is used to that, at least. His nation treated him like he was weak. Too soft. His father exiled him for it, among other reasons, then when he stepped outside the other nations stared in horror at the monster-child walking among them.

It’s too much. Azula should be here, on the throne, not him. She understood the right to rule. She prided herself on it, leading, ruling, keeping an iron grasp on everything she saw. Now Azula is ruling a hospital bed, and Zuko is leading a nation.

He wants to eat. Zuko looks at his bowl and presses his head into his hands. He does. He was so hungry for so long, cheeks growing more hollow by the day until he couldn’t even recognise himself. He _wants_ to eat. He wants to stop wasting food, to pick himself up and eat rice like a normal person.

Zuko has never been normal. Why should this be an exception?

Mai straightens her robes once Zuko is finished crying, then allows him to do the same. She doesn’t try to help. Just watches him with that even expression of hers, stewing in her silence.

Mai feels secure in silence. Zuko feels stifled. Silence was danger, the only hint of the oncoming storm, while for Mai it was her only solace. Her one reprieve from the repetition of her parents’ comments. Maybe that is another reason why they never worked out. Does Mai’s boyfriend like talking? Or is he still and quiet like Mai, primed and poised for action at any moment?

Zuko doesn’t think so. They are unique, the children of the Fire Nation. Those who grew up under the war. The other nations don’t understand. _Can’t_ understand. War was drummed into their brains and hearts and most of the youth Zuko looks at, even now, sincerely believe in the necessity of the war.

“If it wasn’t useful,” he overheard a servant questioning while they washed the laundry. “Then why did so many people die for it? My cousin fought in the 22nd division, did you know? He was there at the North Pole. If there was no point, then why did so many people die for it? I don’t think the Firelord understands.”

Zuko knows this – the war brought the Fire Nation higher, standing on the backs of Earth Kingdom labour and riches, Water Tribe resources, Air Nation blood and bone. It wasn’t them. He loves his nation. They have innovations and ideas he is unmistakably proud of, but it wouldn’t have been possible so quickly, or to such a great extent, if they hadn’t taken advantage of the war.

There is a term for that, but he struggles to remember. He hasn’t been a prince in years. The last time he learned anything about the politics of running a nation was when he was thirteen. It ended with his face being set on fire.

Now Zuko is Firelord. Who would have thought?

The servant has a point. But they were not in the war rooms. They do not talk _daily_ to the men behind the war. Why did the war start? Because Firelord Azulon wanted power. Why did it continue? Because Firelord Ozai wanted power. People grew to accept it – the drafts, the casualties, the disappearances of anyone not pure Fire – because they were told it was for the honour and security of the nation.

If it wasn’t useful, why were so many people willing to die for it?

Because they _believed_ it was necessary. Zuko did too, once. Then he saw thousands of men wiped out in one useless attack against the Northern Water Tribe, the ocean crashing upon them and the Avatar plucking their bodies from the waves, hurling them down into the depths.

Mai stands. “I have business,” she announces, still studying him like some sad creature that turned up on the palace doorstep. “Will you be okay?”

Zuko bristles. “I managed fine without you for a long time, Mai. I don’t need you to hold my hand through running the palace.”

Mai’s eyes narrow. She enfolds her hands in her sleeves, which is the only reason Zuko knows she is not about to gut him for his remark.

“You know, Zuko,” Mai comments casually, looking out over the dining hall. “Maybe you wouldn’t be having such a hard time as Firelord if you just stopped being an asshole for one moment and let people _help_ you.”

Zuko lets her leave.

Mai is right; she usually is. He drags a hand over his face and sags into his seat. He forgets, sometimes. That he isn’t a boy whose mother disappeared, or a prince forced to count every last copper because when he ran out, there would be no more money, not for food or blankets to last the winter. He isn’t the scarred teenager who ran across the Earth Kingdom in search of refuge, hiding from himself and his past.

The war is over. Zuko isn’t alone. There are people around him constantly – advisers and servants and ministers. Some, at least, must be willing to hear him out. And if they don’t, he has friends that are only a letter away.

Mai wasn’t doubting his ability. Azula’s name never passed her lips. Mai is more than just Azula’s former lacquey, and he needs to stop assuming she will side against him the moment he shows weakness.

Mai held him when he cried. She tried to feed him. She came all the way from Kyoshi Island just to see him. Mai won’t leave; not the way he fears.

Zuko stares down at his abandoned plate of food and feels physically ill at the thought of eating. He quietly places his chopsticks together on the plate and sets it aside.

No one was ever there to protect him. His mother tried, but couldn’t shield him or Azula from the training, from father’s bruising hand. No one protected him from getting his face burned in front of the entire court, or from exile, or from three years drifting on the ocean, vesper song on the wind.

Mai can’t protect him. They both know it – Kyoshi too far and their relationship too distant. Mai isn’t trying to say she will. She is offering her hand for Zuko to pull himself to his feet, watching until Zuko begins to move.

She was always like that. Some thought Mai was cold, for never supporting anyone. But Zuko knew Mai. Stepping back was her way of saying _I trust you to get yourself out of this mess._

Zuko thinks her faith in him was misplaced. He wanders the hall of his palace with his royal hairpiece askew in his topknot. Zuko has made more mistakes than anyone else. He knows there is something wrong. Beyond the negotiations, beyond leading, he knows that there is something fundamentally wrong with him. Why can’t he eat? Why won’t he eat? It’s not that he doesn’t _want_ to. He would give anything to be able to just eat what is put before him.

This happened once before, when he was still young and a prince. He choked on their concern, their insistent demands that he just _eat, dammit,_ like Zuko wasn’t already trying his best to stomach it, accusing him of being a picky-eater and needing to just accept the food that is on his plate, like he didn’t throw up _rice._ There was no Mai to stare with pitying eyes or servants to keep trying to sneak him apples that he will take absentminded bites of.

When Zuko was young, they shamed him for everything. He knows now that there is no shame in what is happening, this sickness or whatever it is. But he knows that it isn’t _normal._ Mai and the servants may not be judging him, but they all know something is deeply wrong. Normal people don’t gag at the thought of eating. Don’t go days skating by with barely any sustenance, then throw up what little they have consumed before binging, stuffing down handfuls of food like a contagion, then starving again.

He feels so weak. He has lost strength. He knows how to judge his own ability, and it is slipping, like it did when Zuko arrived in the Earth Kingdom and was forced to steal food whilst living on the streets with Uncle.

He is dizzy more often than not, now. Nauseous. Faint. Zuko nearly passed out trying to walk up the slope of the palace courtyard. He doubled over and lagged behind his advisers, having to signal for a break because he couldn’t _breathe._

That was what made Zuko realise he can't stay like this. Unable to keep up, unable to bear even the mildest of activity. He is _weak_ now, and he has done it to himself. He needs to eat. He needs to fight this, whatever it is, and learn to live again without the rigidity and the sickness. 

But _how?_ Zuko doesn’t even know what is wrong with him, or how to fix it. There are so many other things that demand his attention. The negotations, the blockade preventing a quarter of the Fire Navy from returning home, the people's growing discontent with their soft-willed leader. Nobody wanted Zuko on the throne. Nobody needed him. He is reminded of this fact every time he walks into a meeting with his ministers. 

Zuko is here to stay. They will just have to learn that. He is here, and he is going to do a good job no matter what, and if he wants to be strong enough to lead his people then he needs to eat. He can't keep stumbling through the day and hoping that is good enough. If Azula were here, she would call him a fool. If father were here, he would call him a coward. But neither are here. It is just Zuko, and his uncle on the other side of the ocean. 

It won't be easy. Nothing in his life ever has. But his people, Zuko thinks, are worth the risk. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feel free to comment if i've missed any mistakes!


	3. is is true? is it true?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i struggled majorly with this chapter so apologies if it seems weird or stilted!

Despite Zuko’s newfound resolve, he still finds himself declining food in his study once more. Mai is in a meeting, no doubt intimidating his ministers to get something passed that she doesn’t think Zuko could on his own. She is trying to help, but it grates on Zuko. He should be strong enough to handle this on his own.

The problem is that he _isn’t_. Akari stares expectantly as she slides the silver tray onto his desk, the apple carefully sliced and displayed in a flower shape, as if that is enough to entice Zuko into eating. They seem to have arrived at the conclusion that apples are safe for him to eat. That he is willing to eat them, the way he can carefully choke down rice. But that is _necessity._ Being nagged into eating until he must eat to get them to leave him with his paperwork. He has heard of poisons made from apple seeds. Who is to say the apple alone could not kill him? It is better that he does not eat. He needs to get through this. Finish the negotiations, wrangle the court together, stop the people from marching through the streets calling for a continuation of the war.

Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose. There aren’t many people marching. The majority are still at home and work, bewildered from the abrupt withdrawal from the war. Those who are marching are deeply impassioned by the old teachings. _The Fire Nation is superior. We cannot allow it to be degraded through associations with other nations._ Not in quite those terms, but the meaning is the same. They view Zuko as a weak leader. They howl into the streets and expect him to bow to their demands.

Zuko has come too far and fought too hard to be cowed by them. He thinks of the father down below. He will not be his father, but he will not allow himself to be swayed as easily as a branch in the wind. Zuko will emulate Toph. He will stand firm.

If he thinks about the scheduling of his meetings he might scream. Zuko refuses to look at his calendar as Akari continues to gently pressure him into eating. He goes to sleep well after dark and rises when it is still dark. He keeps thinking that there is time - to eat, to sleep, to talk to his friends. There isn’t. Every time he notices a blank slate in his schedule, his heart beats a little faster in his chest and he begins thinking of what he could do with that time. Then Akari coughs quietly, apologetically adding in another item to his schedule.

Zuko has back-to-back meetings with no breaks nor time to eat. It makes things easier, in some respects. He can focus his attention on the marching and the fleet _finally_ allowed to break through the Water Tribe blockade, sailors flowing home. Mai has no time to watch him eat, because she is also busy writing letters and attempting to tail him from meeting to meeting. He almost feels sorry for her. Even Zuko does not know what he is going to do until he does it – Mai cannot be expected to keep track of his strenuous schedule that changes on a whim.

Mai has retreated, but not given up. He knows better. Azula always called Mai lazy and self-serving. While harsh, it is partially true. Mai _is_ self-serving. But so is Zuko. Is that not part of being human? All they can do is look after themselves. Anything else is optional. He does not expect Mai to take care of him, and he does not expect her to stay in the Fire Nation when she has built a life for herself on Kyoshi.

If Mai were truly lazy, then she would not devote her time to helping a uselessly-indebted Zuko recover. She arranges trays of food he chokes down but cannot retain, and chases shadows so he can feel more at ease. He owes her. More than can ever be fully expressed, he _owes her._

Zuko struggles to think of Azula these days without his heart seizing in his chest. It is not that she shot him with lightning. It is not the fire she roared with her mouth and kicked with her feet. It is the screaming. A teenage girl’s screams- _his little sister's scream-_ echoing and echoing around the courtyard, bouncing off the cobblestones. A sword with no sheath.

Mai does not remind him of Azula. Zuko feels guilty, sometimes. Is it forgetting his sister? Is it _okay_ to forget? To not have her spring to mind when he eats rice with tofu?

Azula never liked strong flavours, despite her insistence otherwise. She always picked at her food, but she never, ever refused to eat rice. She does not spring to mind when he turns down bowls of rice and plates of tofu, her old favourite foods. She is his sister, and she is ill, but Zuko is busy. Isn’t that horrible? He is too busy and too consumed to focus on her and the tragedy of their final parting. He could see her, he knows. He could visit. But whoever is in that hospital is not his sister.

Zuko is not himself, either. Azula is not the only one who has changed. While she is in hospital still raging and screaming, telling her nurses that she is the rightful Firelord, Zuko is dealing with the advisors and councillors who turned their support from her. Neither are who they thought they would be, years ago when the fate of the throne was still being decided by child-soft hands. 

Is this enough? Zuko doesn't think so. But then, no one has ever cared what Zuko thinks. 

They call him for a meeting. Zuko goes, but reluctantly. He has to talk to General Huang about withdrawing soldiers from the western region of the Earth Kingdom. The general refuses to give Zuko an inch, but Zuko will take a mile anyway if that is what is necessary to get his soldiers home and end the stupid stand-off.

Zuko isn’t trying to re-start the war. _He ended it._ He can understand General Huang’s reservations. Zuko comes from a long line of people taking advantage of power. The Fire Nation itself does not have a great reputation, with the imperialism and ruthless, seemingly endless sprawl of invasions. Furthermore, why would General Huang trust Zuko? Until last year, Zuko was the prince who fell from grace but was determined to regain his father’s affections. Why would General Huang trust that Zuko has changed?

Still. Zuko pushes the parchment aside and reaches for his brush, dipping it into the swirling ink. Becoming a leader overnight has forced him to acknowledge some realities. You cannot wait for people to trust you. If there is action to be taken, you must not hesitate. You were handed the responsibility, so you must use it.

General Huang’s distrust of Zuko is unfortunate. Really. It makes his stomach churn when he looks at his bowl and all he can think of it the fact that his rice was grown in a region adjacent to General Huang’s, and that the men General Huang is now fighting to imprison bled the fields dry. Zuko is willing for them to face punishment if they are convicted for crimes. But the rest must return. General Huang cannot hold them hostage merely for the crime of being born into the Fire Nation.

Zuko dances through his dizzy spells and holds his brush painfully straight in his hands, because if he allows it to drop then he will never pick it back up again. He stumbles from meetings into walls and ignores the comments of concern.

Zuko is _trying._ He is eating now, faltering and with reluctance, but he swallows the mouthfuls of rice without complaint. The last time he threw up was a week ago, when an advisor accused Zuko of being a war-mongerer like his father.

He has enough self-awareness within him to know that the food thing did not occur in isolation. Zuko knows he is lying to himself. He is not starving because he is afraid of being poisoned, or because he has concerns about where the food was grown. He just… doesn’t want to eat. Some days he looks in the mirror and sees his father. Sometimes he sees his mother, her kind eyes staring back at him. Zuko thinks that it would be better if he could just waste away. It is a passive method of self-destruction. He isn’t hurting himself – not in a way that anyone can fault him for. He is simply devoting his time to his Firelord duties, and isn’t that what he is supposed to do? His father never ate during meetings. Neither did Iroh.

Mai's painfully concerned expression flashes before him. Akari leaving tray after tray of food, Yasuko and Takahiro fighting over who gets to help the Firelord. People _care_ for him. Maybe his people are still wary, maybe no one wants him on the throne, but he has people in the palace who support him. Zuko bends over his desk. He has to do this. He has to start eating, and recover so he can repay that loyalty.

 _Leave no debt unpaid._ Zuko has incurred too much of it in his lifetime. Song's ostrich-horse, Jin's silence, all the people he has hurt and betrayed, who let him go because they are better people than Zuko ever was. This is something he must do. Repentance is not possible through punishment. He learned that while watching his father scream for an honourable death. 

He startles awake from a dream of writhing snakes and teeth gleaming in the dark. He presses a hand to his head and melts into his desk. By this point his body will have melded with the wood. He is confident the ebony is part bone. 

Mai parts the door and he can sense her quick signals for the guards to leave him alone. She does not wait for permission to cross the threshold, placing a hand against his forehead.

"You're burning up," she observes casually. She stands back without a word. "You know why, Zuko."

 _Poison,_ he thinks frantically for a moment, but they both know it is not. He sighs as he sits up fully. Mai is right, he does know. Not eating, not sleeping, overwork... there are many reasons why Zuko could be burning up. 

Mai stays with him through the rising of the sun, through Akari bustling into his room to deliver his schedule and Yasuko and Takahiro performing their security checks. She does not speak. When he turns, Mai is playing with the knife hidden up her sleeve, bored as ever. 

Akari mentions the possibility of visiting Azula. Zuko flinches away, a forceful rejection leaving his mouth before his brain can process the rest of the sentence. Mai looks up sharply. Akari skitters nervously, but she has been a servant in the palace under both Azulon and Ozai. It would take more than Zuko to scare her.

"I'm sorry," he says anyway, and massages his temples, feeling the fever beating like a pulse beneath his skin. "I'm just- stressed. I shouldn't have yelled."

Akari accepts the apology unthinkingly. Mai examines her for one long moment, taking in the neatly tailored lines of Akari's robes, paired with the heavily-worn soles of her shoes. He can read her conclusions. 

"Leave us," Mai commands easily. He tilts his head in question, but Akari is looking first to him.

"My lord?"

Zuko shakes himself to awareness. "That's fine," he answers the unspoken question. "You can leave us, thank you."

Akari does not look back as she leaves, but he can feel her curiosity permeating through the air. He waits patiently for Mai, wishing he could just lay down. Zuko has an inkling of what she is about to say. 

“Zuko,” Mai says. She blinks slowly at him, eyes dark and wide. “You’re being an asshole.”

He recoils, but knows it is a fair accusation. Mai does not lay judgement lightly. She may throw it like a scroll, rebounding from his head, but Mai never exaggerates and rarely places blame. She doesn’t care enough for it. _Blame is a way to escape responsibility,_ she says. The implication being that Mai herself does not care for responsibility, but also does not hold enough to feel the need to escape from it. 

She sighs. “Go visit your sister. “

Zuko agrees. Mai backs away. He has a choice. He always has a choice. Whether it was between fighting his father or screaming through the pain of his face rendered on fire, Zuko has always had a choice. At least this one is easier to bear.

He wanted to see her. After her fire cooled to faint marks on the stone, and she curled in her chains with her hair strung across her face, they carted her away immediately. To the dungeons, initially. Then they decided to move her lest she encounter the newly-dethroned Phoenix King. The advisors and guards all told Zuko that visiting Azula would be a bad idea. Destabilising for her and dangerous for him.

“She’s my _sister,_ ” he said. Then he thought to their last encounter. His sister, but not. She never had her hair in disarray. She never wore her robes like that. She never cursed or screamed with such _emotion,_ betraying an investment in the proceedings.

Zuko stared at the screaming girl on the courtyard floor and felt pity. What he did not feel was _connection._ As easily as stepping out of an old pair of shoes, he allowed his body to float. His sister was cunning. Ruthless. Lethal. She never cried, she never showed weakness, and she never screamed. Who is his sister? Not the girl in hospital. Zuko swallows around the lump in his throat and turns back to his paperwork. When Zuko was burned, Azula never visited. She took to sneering and whispering of her coward of a brother-

“No brother of mine,” she said.

He places his brush on the desk and frowns. Azula is hurt. Whether he acknowledges it or not, she needs support. He has allowed his feelings to cloud his head. She _is_ his sister. She is. Mai said so. But when Zuko looked at her, vulnerable and crying and halfway to her mental prison already, he did not see the girl of his memories. He saw someone else entirely. A stranger laying on the ground, spewing fire because she knew this was the end for her. 

Zuko is trying to eat. He can stomach three to four mouthfuls of rice almost without fail now. He has found that if he fasts to the point of overwhelming hunger, then he can eat the whole bowl without thinking. But it doesn’t last. Nothing does. It rises back up his throat until Akari finds the discarded lunch inside his wastebasket. His memories of Azula are fading, he finds. Some days he can recall who she used to be, the child chasing after him to drag him into her games. Other times her sneer, her cruel manipulations echo inside his head until he pounds against his thighs to banish them, yelling into his pillow so the guards are not alarmed. Azula was unkind. She thought him weak. Everyone did. When Zuko rises and confronts the ministers who used to support her, all thoughts of her vanish. The image of her screaming through her heaving sobs resides in his mind and his heart. That is what happens when you fall from power. From grace. Power is cruel and blinding, and Zuko sees daily the people who are conspiring to land him in the same state.

He breathes shallowly through his nose. One thing at a time. Zuko cannot divide himself wholly. There are the negotiations, and the unrest, and the food, and his sister. He is dealing with three things already. He is not ready for a fourth, no matter what Mai quietly pushes. Azula deserves better than him. A brother who never visits, who does not think of her unless the sun has fallen. 

Zuko is recovering for his people, not for himself. Zuko is not worth the food they give him nor the clothes they place on his back. He will lead them to ruin. All of them. Zuko has never been good enough. Except he doesn’t need to be the best, here. He is the only one _trying,_ so there is no one to compare himself against. Azula didn’t end the war. Father didn’t end the war. _Zuko_ did that. What does it matter that he isn’t the strongest, the smartest, the wisest? He is here. He is here and he is trying and that still isn’t enough for some people, but there is no one else for the job.

Zuko brought that fleet home. Not Katara. Not Aang. Not Azula or Sokka or Mai. Admiral Yasuo bowed to him upon his return- _properly_ bowed, not merely in the mocking way his advisors do to condescend their teenage ruler. Zuko is trying to be a good person. To fully halt the war machine that is the Fire Nation, to convince his people to lay down their weapons, to sway the world into allowing the Fire Nation to make amends even as Zuko swallows his pride and sends letters begging, pleading. 

Mai thinks he needs to see Azula. Zuko is not a good brother. He is not a good leader or friend. Azula is one more person to try and do right by. He fears it is too late to see her; that her resentment has steeped too long. Zuko is trying, expects to die trying for his people, for his nation, but personal matters come last. Azula can hate him. _Should_ hate him. He was never there for her. But he has meetings and negotiations and more letters to send, troops to withdraw, and Zuko thinks that if he sees Azula like he wants, he will be cast back to the past, to the days where Zuko was too weak to even stand up to his father.

Change is difficult. Zuko snaps his ink brush in frustration. His decisions are not his own, they do not impact Zuko. They impact the people around him. As a leader, he is held accountable for every crying child, every starving peasant, every displeased minister and frustrated diplomat. He cannot be everywhere at once. Zuko cannot handle every problem that arises. He must pick and choose, and he has no time for his sister, and he bows his head against the miserable realisation. He should make amends. Talk to Azula. But she is ill, and he is busy, and why are they still repeating the patterns of their childhood? 

Zuko turns aside the bowls of food Akari leaves. Her expression is one of expectant dismay, and he buries his head in his hands. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so Zuko says something like “whoever is in that hospital is not his sister” in this chapter, which may distress some people so i would like to clarify-  
> Zuko is dissociating a bit here. he’s distancing himself mentally from what his family /was/ and how they are /now/, which is broken and scattered. he’s used to his father and sister being these strong and infallible figures (even though they’re horrible). with the amount of mental pressure he’s under right now, he’s disconnected and can’t quite connect the present with the past. again, this is something we see with his eating – he can’t move on from his days starving, or from what he has witnessed the Fire Nation do. Azula /is/ Zuko’s sister and her mental collapse doesn’t make her any less his sister or herself, so for anyone who may have struggled with that inference please remember that Zuko is not a reliable narrator, and this point will be addressed further soon!  
> take care everyone. wear your mask and wash your hands x


	4. the words repeat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my laptop ate the chapter and i rage procrastinated for a few days. i have no other explanation.

Mai cannot stay forever. She has her own life and responsibilities in Kyoshi. She doesn’t say anything to Zuko, but she doesn’t have to. He already knows.

There are some things that cannot be explained. Zuko thinks of his childhood with Azula. Only those who were there to witness it can ever hope to understand. Zuko sees a monster in his sister and his sister in a monster, and he sees the same when he looks into the mirror. They were children. Then Azula was a weapon and Zuko was an outcast, permanently branded for his weakness. He still wakes in tears.

Similarly, after the war Mai and Ty Lee developed a relationship that even Zuko cannot fully understand. They were the only people who stayed by Azula’s side. Then they turned on Azula and spent months in a war prison. Not that there are any prisons of the Fire Nation that _aren’t_ used for war. Mai must miss the life she built beyond the Fire Nation. He knows her parents still send letters trying to convince her to return permanently.

Zuko floats through meetings and re-learns how to take care of himself. Before, he thought that it was bad, but not bad _enough._ Nothing that would warrant help. He made a kind of pledge to himself that he wouldn’t seek help until it got worse. After all, Zuko was still eating on occasion. He wasn’t starving. Not the way he used to. There was food, and there were servants who helped, and he didn’t deserve any true assistance. Not when he _could_ eat, but refused to.

He thought if he got bad enough then his friends would come running. Maybe Toph would force him into bed and Sokka would try making soup, too salty in the style of the Water Tribe. Zuko knows they care. He knows they are busy. They would come if he called, but he won’t. He can’t. This is life – you cannot wait for someone to force you to get better. If you want your life to be your own, you must do it for yourself. Mai will not sit and feed him until, like a baby bird, he is strong enough on his own. Zuko must take the spoon from her and allow her to leave.

If Zuko truly wants to ruin himself, it would make a lot of people very happy, and others extraordinarily sad. But no one will stop him. No one _can_ stop him.

“Will you be okay?” Mai asks. Her hands are in her sleeves, hiding. Her eyes meet him head-on. “When I leave.”

Zuko pauses to think, because Mai deserves an honest answer. He hasn’t always been a good person. He lied, stole, and threatened. He ran himself ragged in the Earth Kingdom with no one to hold him accountable, starving and fighting and watching people recoil at his golden eyes. He raged into the dying sun and experienced sleeping on earth baked solid by fire and endurance.

Is there anything Zuko cannot survive?

But Mai is not asking if he will survive. She is asking if he will be okay. If he will be _happy._ There is Azula in a hospital who cannot discern time nor location, if the letters are to be believed, and a nation torn between hatred and disbelief at his rule. He has happy servants but furious ministers. Will Zuko be okay?

“Yes,” he answers. He leans forward and drags his hand through the still water of the turtleduck pond. One swims close to his hand. “I’ll be okay, Mai.”

The corners of her mouth turn upwards. “Good,” she says. And that settles everything.

Zuko wakes to ash on his tongue and smoke snaking down his throat. He gags, then hacks up half a lung as he pushes back the covers. His room is a mess. Zuko sighs, looking at the pillars of fire shooting up the curtains. Another assassination attempt, or an accident? There has been enough of both that Zuko cannot be certain.

In the early days, on the ship, Zuko would set things on fire. Nothing big. There wasn’t enough to burn. But he would drift through a dreamscape of muttering courtiers and eyes burning through his back, _weakweakweakuseless_ echoing endlessly through his head. When he woke, his bedsheets were always smoking. He had imagined that he was showing off his firebending in the dream, thinking that they would all cower before his bright flame. Now he knows better. They hated him because the Fire Lord commanded it. There was nothing he could have done to change.

Zuko steps quickly away from the fire spreading throughout his room. He checks on his desk and curses as he spots a stream of embers floating towards the vulnerable paperwork. He can’t lose those. Akari delivered them _yesterday._

He breathes deeply through his nose and reaches for the source of heat, closing his eyes and _pulling_ the fire inwards. It wavers. He can feel it – the fire quieting in his mind. Then he stumbles and catches himself on the corner of his desk. Zuko opens his eyes but cannot shake the darkness crowding his vision. He blinks, then shakes his head to get rid of the spots. It’s just a moment of dizziness. There is a fire in his room that _needs_ extinguishing, and Zuko may not be as strong as he was, even after Katara healed him, but he can still do this.

Zuko tries again. The fire stubbornly resists, and Zuko grapples with it until he pauses for breath and find there is no oxygen in the room. _Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit-_

Gravity tugs at his feet, pulling him down, down, down. Zuko hears Yasuko burst through the doors and shouting furiously toward him. There is a hand on his shoulder and a pale face staring downwards, but Yasuko’s voice is distant. There are words, but no sound. Only the haze of the fire and the crackling in his ears. Zuko struggles to regain his balance but his head moves to the side of its own accord, Zuko’s body following.

Yasuko shakes him. Zuko watches armoured feet appear in his vision, one-two-three-four-five sets that indicate a series of guards, and the heat slowly dies.

 _Good,_ Zuko thinks. _We trained them well._

Then, like slipping under the waves, Zuko is lost.

“You _idiot,”_ Mai yells before Zuko has fully sat up. “What were you thinking?”

“Sorry,” he says immediately. He gestures for a glass of water and Akari leaves silently to summon both food and water.

Mai sighs and presses her hands to her face. Zuko bows his head. Mai rarely expresses emotion openly. He must have truly scared her.

“It wasn’t an assassin.” Mai sits her hands in her lap but he can see her knives glinting. Her face is worn, as though she hasn’t slept all night. Neither are as battle-worn as they used to be. It comes with peacetime.

She adds casually: “But we did catch an assassin on the way. The fire was caused by a servant knocking over a candle. It spread to your room before he could call for help.”

Zuko nods, satisfied with the explanation. He leans back. Mai’s expression suggests he shouldn’t be.

“You could have died, Zuko.” She sighs in frustration. “The smoke… it had gone too far before you woke up. You were too exhausted. The healers say you need to eat more, too.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again. He really is. Mai shouldn’t have to worry about him, so soon to her departure that neither of them wish to mention. “But what should I do instead, Mai? Go scream at him? It was an _accident._ Besides, I’m sure there’s already been a dozen people chastising him for it. Why add more heat to a burning house? It won’t do anything.”

Mai doesn't understand him. He can see it in her eyes. But she pauses to slowly release the tension in her shoulders so that he won't think she is mad at her. Zuko has long since come to understand that Mai expresses affection quietly, nonverbally. It isn't showy or dramatic. For all that she demanded pastries and flowers from him, she never truly liked any of that. She was just bored, and trying to do what she thought a girlfriend would. Mai is used to affection being weaponised. She takes care to never do the same, and if Zuko didn't already know that Mai is one of the best people in his life, the way she avoids upsetting him now proves it. 

Mai is just as blunt as Zuko and equally caustic. Like hot candle wax, they burn to touch and continue burning as long as they are in contact with you. Zuko thinks that breaking up was worth seeing the people they have become, away from one another. He loves Mai. He really does. And he knows, deep in his heart, that she needs to return to Kyoshi. She cannot stay here with him.

“You nearly died,” Mai says again, quietly. “I don’t think you realise, Zuko.”

“I do,” he replies. He drags his face over his face and imagines the nightmare his schedule will have become. “Trust me, Mai. I know. I’m okay.”

Zuko never truly understood what he wanted from life. _Honour,_ he screamed. _My throne._ Things he was told to want, the same way Azula was told to drive a divide so deep between herself and her brother that even now, years later, neither of them can breach.

When the waves were still and brooding, Zuko imagined pitching himself overboard, sinking slowly into the depths. He never acted upon it. He had to capture the Avatar and regain his father’s affection. Even as he rested his hands on the railing, watching the water ripple, he knew he never could. But the thought lingered. Shadowing him from room to room, each time he opened a map or fumbled to convert coordinates for Lieutenant Jee.

When the waters raged, Zuko regained confidence. He barked orders and helped navigate through the storm. Of course he didn’t want to die. Whether it was a conscious thought or not, the moment Zuko stepped into danger, every instinct screamed _survive._ He dragged himself through exile, through starvation, through poverty and hiding and every danger imaginable.

Zuko does not want to die. He touches his throat as he remembers the panic that struck him when he stopped breathing. There are things he wants from this life. Things he cannot achieve in death.

Mai thinks that this will trigger him. That he will resume restricting his food and throwing up when the servants aren’t watching, passively destroying himself. But Mai is wrong. This is another thing she never understood about him. Zuko has finally realised that he wasn’t battling some invisible force. He was only fighting against himself.

When you are sick, people can hand you cold towels and gentle soups, but they cannot fight the illness for you. It is something you must do yourself. That is Zuko and food. He thought that if he got ill enough, then someone would come in and save him. He remembers his mother and her hand on his forehead. But there is no one. If Zuko wants to get better, he must do this alone. Mai can force feed him until she leaves, but Mai cannot force him to recover and they both know it. She will not hold his hand through every step of the way. 

The tension always simmered under the surface. Zuko remembers failing in training and looking up at his father, watching from the balcony. Ozai’s eyes only hardened the longer Zuko went without significant improvement. It became a blurred reel of burning humiliation and desperate determination to avoid disappointing his father.

It was never enough. Ozai ignored it at first, then gradually his voice grew louder and louder. There were punishments. Missed dinners, stinging burns inflicted from his tutors, whispers that resounded through the hallways and had him lowering his head in shame. Zuko didn’t feel much like the Crown Prince. He felt like a failure.

The only blessing was that father never punished him directly.

Zuko knows what the others think. They expect Ozai to have been gloatingly cruel. A monster relishing in pain, the way they thought Azula did. There are gaps in Zuko’s memory, hazy, floating days where he cannot recall where he went or what he did. An outline of a shape with no colour or dimension. If someone were to help him fill in the details, then the image would spring to life. But no one ever did. There remain blank slates that Zuko cannot control.

Still, Zuko grew up being told he was weak. When he stumbled on a kata or couldn't recall exactly what year a former Firelord established the national army, his tutors would harshly punish him. It was never Ozai. He remembers that much. Once Ursa was gone, Zuko and Azula lived lives nearly separate from their father. They saw him at formal dinners, and meetings. Sometimes he would supervise their lessons. That was rare. Mostly, he watched Azula's firebending training. He never watched Zuko's. Not after it became clear that Azula had long since outperformed him. Zuko didn’t see Ozai enough to be punished directly by him.

Ozai burning Zuko was shocking, because he had never thought his father would punish him in front of the entire court. But he was not surprised. Ozai didn't hurt Zuko. There were tutors and instructors for that, burning Zuko's hands and cracking him across the ankles with a wooden cane. What Zuko remembers most is his father's heavy eyes boring into him. He only ever hit Zuko once. Zuko was eleven. He had made a mistake during training that Azula would have laughed at, under normal circumstances. But when Zuko raised his head, no one was laughing. Azula was looking at Ozai.

Zuko doesn't recall exactly what happened. The edges of the memory are rounded and faded. He remembers glimpses. Images coalescing in his mind. The sudden roaring of his father and the sting of grazed palms as Zuko caught himself on the floor. Trying to remember hurts him. It leaves headaches that refuse to disperse. Even Azula never teased him about his punishment that day. Instead, she began avoiding eye contact and changed her tactics.

He may not remember what happened, but he remembers how long it took for his arms to heal. That tells Zuko everything he needs to know. There is a reason he was not surprised when father burned him.

Rest has never agreed with Zuko. Mai tells him to follow the instructions of the healers, but Zuko finds himself restless. There is so much to do. For every moment he delays, more paperwork piles upon his desk. Twice, Mai intercepts him on the way to a meeting, swaying on his feet but pleading with Mai _just this once, he'll never let it go if I don't attend this meeting,_ and twice Mai escorted him to bed. Shaking her head and sighing. 

"I leave for Kyoshi next week," Mai says. She presses chopsticks to his hand, eyes unfathomable. He thinks she might be sad. "Please take care of yourself, Zuko."

Another thing about rest is that it allows him time to think. He takes the chopsticks from Mai and tells her to get some rest of her own, eyes bloodshot from waking throughout the night to check on him. _Mai is kind,_ he thinks. Kinder than even she realises. He regrets ever agreeing with Ty Lee when she said Mai was emotionless. Mai simply has her own way of expressing such things. He owes it to her to give her enough peace of mind to leave for Kyoshi. He watches her leave the room quietly, footsteps as silent as they were during the war. Even before her own involvement.

There is no one who emerged unmarked. Now they must live with the knowledge. Zuko more than most - not just the war, but his family. All of them. 

After his Agni Kai with Azula, he was wracked with lightning spasms for weeks. Zuko moved the current from his heart and Katara healed the burning flesh, but neither they nor the palace healers could fix the sudden twitch to his hands. His muscles would seize, leaving him with shattered porcelain and bleeding fingertips.

"What is _wrong_ with me?" he rasped between choked off gasps. He remembers the guilt - cold steel plunged into his heart. He remembers how it sank into his core and refused to leave.

But there was the ocean. _Look_ , they said. _If you do not like the palace you can live there instead._

And there was his sister. Screaming herself hoarse, sobbing and scratching like a person half gone. There was so much to do after the invasion. No one wanted him on the throne. He was forced to compromise. Otherwise - the ocean. An impossible alternative, half a command to die, half a command to bow.

Zuko did not want to bow. He did not want to die, either. He turned his eyes from Azula and onto the palace, onto the future, where the peace negotiations and withdrawals were commencing. 

It was a choice between the hospital or the death penalty. Zuko chose what he thought would be best for the little sister he remembered, fleetingly, in his memories. Now he wonders if he should have chosen for who she became. Azula would rather die than live with his pity. Zuko knows that all too well. It is what he would have done, all those years ago. Jumped into the freezing depths of the ocean without a second thought, stubborn and determined. _I will live here,_ he would have said. _I know how to swim._ And he would never, ever have resurfaced.

He would have died. Zuko hates to think that he hasn't changed that much, after all. The ministers said _make this work,_ and the world said _make this work,_ and Zuko looked into the mirror each day and told himself _make this work,_ emptying his stomach and stabbing his brush into his thigh to keep himself awake during meetings. He has to stop destroying himself for others. Ozai is powerless. Locked away where he will never see Agni's light. Zuko can stop now. There is no one with the power to tell him to destroy himself. Zuko did that all on his own.

That is what Mai was trying to tell him. Between the waning hours of twilight and the morning dew, Mai sat with him at the table, again and again trying to convince him to eat. She did not force him or forbid him from leaving the table. It was a simple message - you are the only person who is responsible for this. Recovery, or death. 

There are other things Zuko is responsible for, too. 

The spring flowers were only just beginning to blossom when Zuko was exiled. He watched, half blinded and clutching his face in agony even during sleep, as the petals began to fall. He saw them drift in the wind. Some floated past the deck of the ship and he kicked at the deck, cursing.

But he wasn’t angry, then. Only sad. Uncle gently offered a game of Pai Sho, and that is the only time Zuko ever accepted. It stopped him from thinking of Azula. It was mother with whom he used to watch the flowers blossom, and later fall, but after mother left Azula stopped dragging him into her games. She stopped playing at all. She only stood with Mai and Ty Lee in the gardens, pretending to be too haughty and mature to desire such things.

Azula always had to be presentable. It was manageable, in the early days. Then mother left and father began bearing down upon them, thunder and lightning rolling over without mercy. That is when it became almost obsessive. He would catch her, sometimes. Checking her reflection in the mirror and snapping at her handmaids to do _better._ She was always fixing her hair when she thought he couldn’t see. Zuko doesn’t associate Azula with the spring blossoms because she _liked_ them. Instead, she despised them. They were always falling into her hair and she wasted precious time trying to pry the flowers from her hair, fingers mussing up her topknot in the fruitless search.

Before they became estranged from one another, she would let Zuko gently pluck the flowers from her hair while she dramatically huffed and rolled her eyes.

“That should be a servant’s job, Zuzu,” she would say, and Zuko would roll his eyes in return because _little sisters,_ and neither of them would say what they truly meant. They never did.

He wonders if he will ever get the chance to tell her what those days with her in the gardens meant to him. Before he was burned. Before father started watching her, waiting for her to fail too. Her sharp edges became honed until she cut everyone around her, slowly turning brittle. Azula was not a good person. Neither was Zuko. The difference between them is that Zuko found a way out. Azula continued on her path until she collapsed under the rising, bloody moon.

Zuko knows now that he was scared. Scared of who she became, and who he would have become if he hadn’t left.

People forget that he was exiled. Time froze for him. He couldn’t see the Fire Nation and wasn’t permitted to receive letters, let alone sketches. All he had to remember his home by were faded scraps of memory. Caldera remained half bustling, half dead, the fish mongers standing by the shore to impress pedestrians with the freshness of their catches. The turtledecks stayed young and eager. His bedroom was just as he left it, covers unmade and scattered papers on the desk for an assignment from his history tutor. He imagined that when he returned, everything would be exactly the same. Or perhaps more correctly, he could never have imagined the way that things would change.

Azula was still short and held baby fat in her cheeks. She had tics, back then. A nervous tap to her foot and a reflexive twirl of her hair around her finger. She only managed to rid herself of one. The other, she eventually hid as a manipulative gesture.

Zuko wasn’t naïve. He knew Azula hated him. He was half convinced that he hated her in return, by the time he was exiled. But during those years of endless searching for the Avatar, she was still his prodigal little sister who let him comb her hair for flower petals. Then he saw her again, and his heart hardened and crumpled. She wasn’t little anymore. Her barbs had only grown sharper, and she hated Zuko even more than he could remember.

He stopped thinking of his childhood with mother, then. But he clung to recollections of the palace gardens, the vendors, the man who walked past the walls every second Monday loudly holding storytelling sessions with the people. That was what Zuko wanted to return to. His home. The war was only a distant rumble, and he thought that if he proved he could became harder, like Azula, then he would magically slot back into place and all would be forgiven. Then Azula would stand beneath the blossom trees again, too old to let him brush her hair but not too old to push him over and laugh. Father would be proud. Maybe he wouldn’t punish them for it, too.

Zuko reaches for his face and presses his hands to his eyes. He doesn’t want to cry. Not now. These are thoughts and feelings of the past. They have no service to Zuko anymore. He isn’t the boy who lost his home and couldn’t speak his home language in ports without getting spat at. He is Firelord. There is a reason people hate the Fire Nation, and they have a responsibility to help repair the world they damaged. Zuko shouldn’t focus on the past. He shouldn’t focus on his ailing sister. There are papers to sign and meetings to attend and he has no _time_ for it, for any of it. This is Zuko's duty. He is not someone who is allowed to indulge anymore. 

_Her spirit broke,_ the letters say. _It’s like she isn’t even here._

His sister and his nation are separate, and history has shown time and time again that in their family, you cannot have your siblings and your throne. Azula would try to kill him. Sick or not, here or there, Azula would put a knife through his throat the moment she saw him and reclaim the throne for herself. It’s impossible. Zuko cannot give her the chance to ruin months of peace negotiations and nearly a year of nonstop effort to halt the machinations of the former War Council. Between his sister, or the security of the nation, it’s not even a choice-

Except it shouldn’t have to be a choice.

Zuko stands, inspired. Isn’t that what being Firelord means? Zuko can choose what he wants to be. He can decide the rules. He doesn’t have to repeat the mistakes of rulers past, who prioritised war over peace, power over family. Zuko turned his back on his ancestors when he declared that the Fire Nation was done with war. If he can face his nation after that and reaffirm daily that they will become a nation of peace and cooperation, and beauty and culture, not just the war mongers with golden eyes who destroyed other lands, then he can face his sister.

Zuko wasn’t a good brother. He knows that. But he chose to try to be a good leader even if it kills him, and he chose to tell Mai to go back to Kyoshi and be happy, stop worrying about me, and he chose to sit down in front of food every day to try and ingrain it into his brain until it becomes habit once more. He can choose to do right by Azula.

He looks outside and sees the cherry blossoms waver on the leaves, the wind gently stirring them. As he watches, the first petal begins to slowly fall. There is no reason why he watches. He only longs for the blush-pink flowers. Mai will leave soon, and Zuko will be alone. Building a nation of peace that will never appreciate him for what he has accomplished, because Zuko was the first. No one ever likes the first person to try and change things. Zuko will be remembered as a historic leader, but not a popular one. It is the most he can hope for. The most he can expect of anything, beyond a short life. 

Azula is alone in her hospital. Zuko is alone in the palace. They are different people now, no longer the youth of the past. Zuko places the ink brush back on the desk and turns away from his paperwork.

Maybe it is time to give being siblings another try. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so this chapter had a more Azula-Zuko focus 1. because i couldn't remember what i wrote before and 2. because Azula's story is intrinsically tied to Zuko and influences how he sees the world. she's his little sister and she's important to him, so i hope that doesn't bother anyone!  
> mostly edited this chapter for once but there are some parts i may have missed, so feel free to shoot a message if you spot an error or find a section lacking!  
> (also i would apologise for the slow updates but y'know what? i'm doing my best. thanks for following along anyways <3)


	5. the silence echoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko talks with Azula. Some things go right, whilst others go completely against the plan. He finds himself with his sister once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for a more heavy ED focus from about halfway down.  
> also warning for depictions of hospitalisations and mental illness!

Azula’s face is pale. She must not spend very much time in the sun. Her hands are steady when she reaches for the glass of water, but the nurses quickly swoop in to help her anyway. Azula’s eyes are tired. Too tired for outrage. She slumps in her chair and stares at Zuko with an empty gaze.

“What do you want, Zuko?” she asks finally.

What does he want?

“To say hello,” he replies softly.

His crown is in his bag and he changed into a plainer set of robes before he visited, but in his mind, it is like Azula’s searching eyes burn through the adjustments. She knows he is Firelord now. She knows about the robes, the crowns, the platters of food at his fingertips. And she knows he wore his hair down for a reason, regardless.

Azula changes every time he sees her. She was a child, then a victim, then someone cruel and untouchable, then all-too touchable. She cried until she exhausted herself. Then they took her away. Now she holds a blanket in her lap and holds eye contact, but her fingers twist nervously in the fabric.

“Why are you here?” Azula tilts her head, like the lost bird that once sat outside his window until it gave up and flew into the winter. “You’re Firelord now. Shouldn’t you be busy with the throne?”

Her tone seems almost bitter, but she cannot fake emotion. Azula, if she feels anything, does not care that Zuko is on the throne. She reaches again for the water even though he knows her throat isn’t dry. A nurse tries helping her once more and Azula finally snaps at her, batting the hands away and scolding them for being useless.

“I can hold a glass of water without help, you hags,” her tongue sparks and flies.

He doesn’t recognise her. This is not a shade of Azula that he has encountered before. Zuko watches the nurses move around her, ignoring her words except to smile indulgently, while Azula slowly capitulates. She looks like a child. Her hair covering her face, the baggy robes making her appear even smaller. For the first time, she looks her age. Zuko thinks of the children he passes in the streets of Caldera. They worry about school, and making friends, and if their parents will be mad at them for their poor grades. None of them have a dead mother and an imprisoned, dethroned father and a brother who can’t be bothered to write.

Azula seems small in more ways than one. Regret pangs deep inside his heart. She needed someone- not him, specifically, they were never close enough for that- but _someone._ Anyone who cared.

“The last time I saw you was on the night of the eclipse.” Zuko smooths down his robes and tries looking her in the eye. He forces a smile onto his face, hoping it will be comforting. “Have you been well?”

She stares dully back at him, surprise slowly dawning. “Zuko, are you an _idiot?”_

“I’m sorry,” he fumbles awkwardly, looking to the nurses for help. “Should I not have mentioned the eclipse?”

“Not that,” Azula waves away impatiently. She leans forward in her seat. “You dum-dum, did you seriously try asking about me? I was nearly crowned Firelord. Aren’t you here to kill me?”

With a start, he realises that Azula has not encountered this version of Zuko, either. It is like looking into a pool of water once familiar to you, only to find the water rippling endlessly so you cannot gain a clear view. Maybe the water settles, eventually. Maybe it continues whirling and splashing and you walk away in disappointment.

Time will tell. It always does.

“I’m not here to kill you.” Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. Of course Azula would assume that. Are they really so distant from each other now that she would think him capable?

The eclipse was a night of desperation for everyone. Both sides knowing it their last chance to change or confirm the outcome of the war. Zuko strains his memory, trying to recall if he was too cruel to Azula during their Agni Kai. All he remembers is the singed hair on his arms from Azula’s blasts shooting too close, then the burn of lightning. He hears her laughter in his dreams. Wandering through the cracked cobblestones and freezing at Katara’s touch. 

Zuko has always put himself first. When he attempted otherwise- when he spoke out for recruits being sent to the slaughter for some stupid hill- or for a kingdom who didn't deserve to be razed to the ground- then he was punished. Looking out for others earned him nothing but pain. Except in the end, it gained him friends. A new future for himself and his nation. Zuko taught himself to look out for others again, wrote it into his brain until he saw it before his eyes at night, but he didn't extend that to Azula. He still thought only of himself. How he was feeling. How he was busy. How he had a nation to run and mouths to feed and negotiations to hold, and he convinced himself that Azula was doing just fine after being dethroned. 

He was selfish. Azula was the one thing he couldn't handle. He pushed her aside. He was taking care of himself, but he was also being cruel. Zuko sent her to the hospital that the ministers recommended, and he left instructions for her to receive the very best care, along with a sizable donation. He didn't see her off personally. He didn't visit the hospital before he sent her there. He was _busy._ Zuko trusted, blindly, that Azula would recover far from the sight of the palace.

Instead, she was forgotten. Even by Zuko. What is worse is that she knows it. Azula was always ahead of the curve with things like these. Her eyes stare back at him - defiant.

Zuko wants to go to sleep. He wants to curl up in a cave somewhere and just not come out for a hundred years, like Aang did. There is so much that Zuko cannot control. He cannot convince Azula that he is here because he cares, because he was the one who sent her here. He cannot convince his nation that he cares, because he is the person who inherited Ozai's bloody throne. And he cannot convince himself that he deserves anything, because he was the one who caused all this in the first place. 

He cried when he ate and he cried when he didn’t eat, because he desperately wanted to. The food was _right there._ His favourites piled high to entice him into eating. And Zuko _wanted_ to eat it, he wanted to eat the sweet blossom cakes and spicy fire flakes that he missed so badly when he was away, but he found himself crying instead because he couldn’t choke them down no matter how hard he tried. His body was repulsed. Zuko scrambled to the bathroom to try and vomit it up, pressure ballooning in his stomach and expanding slowly throughout his body, but he could never choke up more than bile. It was disgusting. He was disgusting.

Zuko hated being sick like that. He knows that these steps towards recovery are for the best. Talking to Azula, eating at meals, having snacks brought in during meetings. He isn’t starving himself anymore. He isn’t drained from the short walk between his chambers and the War Room. There are so many things that Zuko can do now, and even more that he is no longer afraid of.

Yet he still misses it. Zuko slumps in his chair over his desk and longs for the relative simplicity of the disorder. If nothing else, frantically starving himself would give him something to focus on. An aim. Something to make him feel capable again, like he can accomplish things if only he tries hard enough.

Zuko hates feeling useless. It is his most familiar experience. He _knows_ that he was sick, knows it scared himself and those around him, casting long shadows behind him. But it made things easier. When the meetings got too much, bearing down upon him like a collapsing cavern and sucking Zuko into the dark, he could focus instead on avoiding food.

He told himself it was to make himself focus. To force his brain to work on solutions to the meetings and alternatives during the peace solutions, rather than digestion. Zuko convinced himself that with each bite avoided, he was giving himself another moment of clarity, of willpower. _Avoid eating and you will become a better leader._

What a beautiful illusion. Instead, Zuko began tossing and turning at night instead of sleeping. He drifted off during meetings. He walked into a wall one day because he was trying to keep pace with the ministers and lost sight of the wall, watching instead the tremor of his hands and the fierce beating of his heart. Zuko didn’t become more capable. He didn’t become stronger, or wiser, or even thinner if that was what matters. He just became sick. The worst part is that he knew it and ignored it. Seduced into the ease of illness. The perfect lie that promised if he just focused on this one thing- food, and avoiding it- then everything would turn out okay.

Ignoring a problem doesn’t fix anything. It only makes things worse. Zuko drags his hand over his face, finally resolved. There is no magic solution for Azula. She was betrayed. He was her brother and he fought her and sent her away, no matter what his intentions were. He dethroned her and put her in a hospital that has left her paler than the saucer he holds in his hands.

Azula needs to get away. He honestly does not know if she is willing to return to Caldera. But she needs a new environment. Somewhere she can heal. When Zuko looks at her, there is no rage in her eyes. Only boredom and faint traces of frustration, hidden behind layers of exhaustion.

Azula wants to leave. She never coped well with confinement. Her birthday is approaching soon – is Zuko really willing to leave her here? Turning fifteen in a cold ward?

 _No,_ he decides.

“I’m taking you home,” he announces loudly.

Azula drops her glass. The nurses immediately swarm around her, but she refuses to break eye contact with Zuko. She pays no heed to the shattered glass at her feet.

“Stop joking,” she spits harshly, her eyebrows drawing together. Blood wells on her lip. “Stop joking, Zuko. It’s not _funny._ ”

“I’m not joking,” he promises, and waits for the nurses to finish sweeping the glass. He shakes his head when they try to withdraw Azula, who sits tense and hostile. “Azula, I really want to take you home. If you want.”

Azula lets out a loud, mocking laugh. “ _If I want._ Tell me Zuko, why don’t _you_ want it? If you did, I would have been at the palace months ago.”

She was always smarter than him. Zuko tries not to let the remark sting. When father banished him, it took years to realise that father didn’t want him back. Only when Azula tried capturing him did he finally understand. Here, Azula already knows that Zuko would have brought her back sooner had he been so inclined. But he wasn’t. There was too much going on, too much to handle. Zuko wasn’t in any position to handle his own health, much less his sister’s.

Zuko was wrong. He knows he was wrong, that he didn’t take care of Azula, that he didn’t protect her from the gleeful ministers at her dethronement. He should have. Azula protected him in her own way when Zuko finally returned home. She gave him credit for her own accomplishments and tried to help him reintegrate, warning him against seeing Iroh lest he appear suspicious. Zuko thought they were threats at the time. Another method of intimidation. Perhaps they doubled as threats but looking back, all he can see is a concerned sister. One trying her hardest not to let it show.

Azula wasn’t a perfect sister. She lied and manipulated and he spent half his life being wary of her. But when Zuko compares how they treated each other during their periods of peace, Azula comes out on top. She tried. In her own way, she tried to be a sister. Can Zuko honestly say the same?

“I’m sorry I made you feel like you aren’t welcome.” Zuko looks at Azula without wavering. He places his hands on the desk and Azula’s eyes flicker towards them. “I was wrong. Being busy is no excuse for not visiting. If you don’t want to come back to Caldera, I understand. You can choose another place if you want.”

“No,” Azula quickly interjects, leaning forward. She tries to play it off casually. “I mean, the palace is rightfully mine. It is only correct that I return there.”

Zuko smiles. “Good. I’m glad. I’ll have the nurses discharge you, but we might have to do a treatment plan for Caldera.”

Azula flicks her hair and scoffs. She sounds the most like herself she has been since Zuko arrived. He did write, occasionally. He sent letters that received no reply. The nurses said Azula didn’t want to talk to him. To anyone. Now he watches her slowly relax, pleased at the prospect of leaving but too stubborn to voice her desire.

Zuko feels guilty all over again.

The gardens were always his and mother’s space, but the staff recently introduced a new pavilion. There is a swing, and lilies growing throughout the space. Calming. He thinks Azula might like it, if she can push through the discomfort of sitting still for more than an hour. She was always too busy for things like relaxation. She will want a space to practice her firebending, too. He frowns as he tries to think of somewhere for her that won’t bring up old memories.

A problem for their return. He cannot force Azula to find peace. He can only offer time, and space, and hope that it is enough. She has agreed to come home. Isn’t that a promising start?

He holds Azula’s luggage in his hand and tries not to notice how light it is. Azula herself appears unbothered, standing ahead of him with her arms folded. Her hair is still loose and tangled. He fights the urge to hand her a brush and her crown. She rejected his help earlier with a withering glare. Azula isn’t the same as she was, and he cannot treat her like she is. He must take this new sister one step at a time

Zuko lets her climb into the travel balloon by herself, pale and unsteady but jaw clenched to avoid crying out. Her spine straightens as she enters. Zuko hauls the luggage onto the metal deck and ignores the swarming attendants trying to help. Azula mutters something to herself that Zuko ignores.

He said he would try. He never said it would be easy.

They arrive in Caldera as morning breaks, red spilling across the sky. Azula tenses next to him. They both remember the night of the eclipse. The way it stained the sky, the ground, their hands. Zuko looked at his robes after the coronation and couldn’t distinguish between the fabric and his own exhausted mind throwing stains where none exist. He moves closer to Azula. Not touching, not in her personal space, but present. She breathes quietly in a way that reminds him of their old meditation exercises. It has a deliberate pattern to it that has Zuko tilting his head.

Azula doesn’t comment on Zuko’s presence, but she slowly leans against the railing in a way that brings her closer to Zuko. He hides his smile. Some things never change, and Azula’s subtle ways of seeking affection is one of them. He only regrets that he didn’t pick up on it sooner.

The servants don’t seem surprised to find Zuko with Azula. Possibly Mai alerted them. She understands Zuko better than himself, some days. He cannot see Mai anywhere near the landing pad but supposes that she must be waiting to evaluate Azula’s mental state before she reveals herself, if at all. The two didn’t leave things off in a good place. Zuko knows Mai did what she thought was right, but also knows the spiral it sent Azula into. Sometimes things happen that you can’t control. Azula needed to learn that.

He holds her gently by the arm as they move past the servants. Azula holds her head high, seemingly as haughty as ever, but he can feel the tremor of her shoulders through his hand on her back. The shame must be settling. Zuko should have predicted that. He wishes he had insisted upon Azula combing her hair and changing clothes, so she would not have to appear vulnerable before the staff. He knows she must despise the idea.

These are not the same people that Azula terrorised and banished in the few weeks of her reign. Well, mostly not the same. Many left the palace without Ozai’s overbearing hand preventing their departure, and others left out of fear of their strange new Firelord. The staff they have now are smaller in number but larger in heart. Zuko trusts them to welcome Azula. If not for her own sake, but for his.

Zuko has his sister back. It feels foreign, clumping heavily in his throat as he gives out orders for her room to be unlocked. He never touched it while she was gone. It was cleaned daily, everything left exactly the way she left it – only without the broken glass and rumpled sheets. His sister is back to improve or destroy her room as she sees fit, and she could raze the lily pavilion rather than enjoying it, or laugh at him during meetings and spread rumours, and Zuko would still want her here. It isn’t a fickle, conditional thing. For better or worse, he wants Azula in the palace by his side.

Zuko has been leader long enough to weather whatever chaos Azula feels like stirring. As long as she continues healing. As long as he doesn’t see her as listless as she was in the hospital. Some things are more important than your reputation. Zuko has long known that doing thing outweighs all else, but he thinks he has finally realised that family can come first too. Not everyone is out to get him. He doesn’t have to choose the throne or his sister, his family or peace. So what if Azula tries to depose him? So what if she gathers with the ministers? It was Zuko who brought the nation to peace and it is Zuko who has ruled for over a year.

He only wants Azula happy. He wants them all to be happy. Nothing about their situation is conventional but Zuko thinks he is okay with that.

Azula nearly smiles when he mentions that her room was kept clean and untouched. She is prickly and prideful, this sister of his, but he comes closer to understanding her each day. They can build something from this. These flashes of affection. They can be siblings again. Whatever happens, Zuko knows in his heart that he will not abandon Azula again. Doesn’t that make them family? Properly, finally family?

He guesses they will find out. He jogs after Azula to tell her about the lily pavilion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think we're about to wrap up with this story because i think i've done almost all i can with it. i set this fic up in a way that didn't lend itself to a prolonged exploration or storyline - it was designed to capture a moment in time during the beginning of Zuko's reign. so we'll probably be done soon!


	6. so show me the way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it took me a long time to post this chapter because i was worried about finding the "perfect" ending. eventually i realised that there's no such thing, and that if you were happy to read my writing thus far you'll probably be happy with whatever i wrote for this. i hope you enjoy the chapter!

Akari brings Zuko breakfast. He thanks her and allows her to leave, but she lingers. 

"What is it?" he asks. 

Akari shuffles as she decides whether to speak.

"I'm proud of how far you've come," she says eventually, smiling faintly. "You didn't turn me away."

Zuko places his brush on the desk and realises with a start that he actually begun eating without thanking. Looking down at the tray, several apple slices are missing. Zuko's head spins and his mouth feels suddenly dry. He cannot deny the panic that spreads through him - he has a meeting in half an hour, he can't afford to be slowed down by food in his stomach. He closes his eyes and breathes through the emotion. He mentally envisions grains of sand ticking through a glass.

When he opens them, Akari is still standing before him, almost reaching out. She withdraws her hand as soon as she sees that he is okay.

"I hadn't noticed that I ate," Zuko tells her honestly. Then he smiles and thinks of his progress. "I guess this means I really am getting better."

Akari's eyes are kind as ever. "So you are, Zuko. Just as Princess Azula is."

Azula has settled into the palace without much fanfare. In the first few weeks, she stayed in her room and refused to see anyone, even the servants. Then she allowed a maid inside. From there, the stream of people gradually tickled wider. After a month the guards informed Zuko that they saw Azula actually leave her room, wandering the hallways like a wraith. Her blanket draped over her shoulders. 

The next step was introducing her to the recovered courtyard. She stared at it like a serpent waiting to spring outwards, but had no other reaction. The courtyard was where they had their Agni Kai. Zuko regrets not taking care of her afterwards. He regrets that it all came down to an honour duel in the first place. But the various training rooms in the palace were all occupied by different messengers and representatives from across the Fire Nation talking and discussing their plans for their respective regions. Zuko encourages free speech - the more opinions that are heard, the better. He refuses to be his father.

The courtyard is the only place Azula can practice her firebending. He watched as she slowly kneeled on the cobblestones, and made a movement that could have been trying to wipe away silent tears. Azula was always like that. She never wanted anyone to see her as weak. When she finally stood, she removed her cloak-like blanket for the first time since she arrived, setting it nearly aside. Then she ran through her katas without fire.

Ever-so-slowly, Azula began resuming her regular duties. Nothing official. But she began taking an interest in the affairs of the world again. Even things as simple as what they were eating for dinner. It didn't take her long to discover Zuko's weakness - the eating. The old Azula would have used it against him. The new Azula never let on that she knew, and let him do as he pleased. Occasionally he found her personal servant whispering messages to the guards, and a bowl of soup would appear on his desk. 

"We're both getting better," Zuko confirms. He bows in gratitude to Akari, who scrambles in horror to make him rise again. "None of this would be possible without the support of our staff."

"Don't thank us," Akari scolds fiercely, and the guards by the door appear supremely uncomfortable. "You're our leader! You need to be healthy."

"Still." Zuko finally rises from his bow and Akari's hands release him. "You're the first people to ever believe in me. _Thank you._ "

Zuko knows his words will spread across the palace like wildfire. The entire nation will know within a week, he guesses generously. But that's okay. Zuko doesn't care what anyone says. Akari was the first person to extend her hand. Yasuko and Takahiro, his personal guards. The kitchen staff. Zuko dug himself into a hole and refused to come out. He was too scared. But they reached for him and contacted Mai, and together they helped pull him upwards. Words will never be enough to thank them. 

He smiles again. 

Azula inspects the lilies and frowns. “They’re wilting.”

“They’re not wilting,” Zuko argues. He runs his thumb along one of the petals. “See? They’re just underwatered.”

“Then get the gardeners to _water them,_ ” Azula demands, rolling her eyes like it should be obvious.

Zuko never expected her to like the lily pavilion. He hoped she would – hoped that she would finally have a space where she felt free to relax. But he knew that Azula would never quite enjoy sitting still, the same way Zuko finds himself itching for something to do after even an hour of rest.

“I don’t like the pavilion,” Azula scoffed when her raised it with her. “I just don’t want you to have wasted your time on this useless endeavour. Letting it become ruined would only be a blight on the rest of the gardens, and thus on our reputation.”

She didn’t stalk away dramatically once she was finished with her clearly practiced spiel, but she did toss her hair and that is nearly the same thing in Zuko’s book. She looks healthier these days. Less fragile. When she first came back from the hospital, a strong breeze could have knocked her over. The hospital wasn’t the right environment for her. It carried her through the dark space following the invasion and their Agni Kai, but she wasn’t healing there. Not properly. Now, her skin has regained its colour and she is steady on her feet, if not as strong as she used to be.

Azula will likely never regain her full strength. Too much has happened. Just as Zuko will never look at the moon without thinking of that night, Azula has her own ghosts. The war is over. They don’t have to be strong anymore. There is no need for warriors in the new world. But sometimes, panic constricts his chest at the thought that they have somehow surpassed themselves. They were too good, and now they can never be who they were.

He expected Azula to be more upset by the idea. Instead, she is calm.

“I spent a year in hospital, Zuzu,” she said without looking at him. “I figured that one out a long time ago. You’re slow as ever, dear brother.”

Zuko doesn’t know if Azula has truly made her peace or if she is only faking it. He suspects he will never be able to tell the difference unless Azula lets him. There are some things that are purely theirs – to be kept safe in their chest. Zuko doesn’t push for Azula to divulge hers, and she in turn does not push for his. Equilibrium. Maybe not peaceful or tranquil or whatever other fancy words Sokka likes using in his letters, but it’s a balance that works for them.

Having Azula back has been… nice. Zuko regrets not reaching out sooner. Things were disorganised in the palace and he was struggling to get through each day, helped only by Mai’s occasional visits. Now he has a sister constantly by his side who, if not interested in politics, certainly understands them. Azula has so far stayed her hand. Her recovery is far from over, and she has not been reintegrated into her royal duties. Maybe she never will be. But once, when Zuko was blindsided by a migraine after a meeting with the ministers when he was on his way to visit her, she ordered her staff to lay him down and dim the lights. Then when he finally sat up, she sighed and demanded he tell her everything.

“I thought you didn’t want to know about the meetings,” Zuko wondered in confusion.

Azula clicked her tongue. “Still slow, Zuko. I don’t care about the meetings and what those old fogeys are up to–“ momentarily reminding Zuko that Azula had in fact worked with these men when _she_ was on the throne “–but I do care when you collapse on your way to see me. I’m a busy person, Zuzu. I don’t appreciate people wasting my time.”

He told her everything. Azula listened carefully for all of two minutes, then scoffed dramatically and explained exactly what measures he needed to follow to get the bill passed. 

“You can’t expect them to recognise something good for the nation,” she commented mercilessly, leaning forward in her seat. “You have to tell them that you are implementing it, then get it approved afterwards.”

“Ask forgiveness, not permission?” Zuko guesses.

Azula looks at him like he is an idiot. “Are you serious? No, Zuko, the point is to not ask them for anything. You’re in charge now. They have to get used to that.”

It feels strange to watch her direct her signature venom elsewhere. He finds it comforting. This is not the fiercely competitive sister he was raised with, but it is still undeniably Azula. There is no father to impress anymore. No reason to fight against each other. Ozai is imprisoned and the throne is Zuko’s and not going anywhere. They were throwing themselves against a wall their entire lives, only to discover that someone removed it when they weren’t looking, forcing them to come face to face. Azula finally realised her brother was more than an idiot who refused to come home. Zuko realised his sister was more than a habitual liar who supported their father to the end.

There are degrees. Shades of grey. Not everything has to be clearly divided.

They sit down for a meal together. Outside in the gardens, where neither feels suffocated by remnants of the past. Azula likes closing her eyes to feel the breeze, and Zuko likes that he can eat without being scolded for the amount.

There are buns, and dumplings, and a side of fire flakes that Azula insisted upon ever since Zuko told her it was his favourite food. She doesn’t like spice. She prefers her food bland – a side effect of having to eat quickly between training sessions. Spice made things hard to digest. He hadn’t realised that about her until she mentioned it in conversation. He knew she liked her food bland, but never knew why. They have both learned things about each other since their return to the palace.

Zuko picks at his fire flakes, and Azula slowly chews on the Earth Kingdom style buns without a word against their origin. Zuko still fears that something will tip the tables. That with the wrong phrase, the wrong movement, Azula will leave the palace and never come back. He wants her to feel safe. He wants his sister. Zuko knows, logically, that Azula would rather kick him out than leave herself, but anxiety is not a force that can be controlled. Only managed.

He breathes out through his nose and transfers another bun to Azula’s plate, who takes it without comment. Then she narrows her eyes and shoves a bowl of soup across to him. It sloshes against the table and the old Azula would have thrown it in his face to cover her mistake, lest she be seen as a royal who doesn’t know proper etiquette. Now, she resumes eating without a word, as if daring him to comment.

It’s her uncaring attitude that finally makes him smile. He can stomach soup. Rather than forcing the heavier foods on the table upon him, she gave him something she knows he will eat, and made no attempt at coercion or guilting. Zuko sometimes forgets how well Azula knows people. She always used it to get what she wants, which was usually the opposite of what Zuko wanted. Now it frequently aligns.

They sit in comfortable silence. The evening heat swells around them, and the cicadas buzz faintly. Zuko feels more assured than ever that things will be okay. If not now, then sometime in the future.

He never used to be able to imagine his future. When he was young, he thought he would live like Iroh. Fighting battles, travelling between nations, acting as a kind of counsel to his father. Then he was banished. ‘The future’ narrowed to one moment only – returning with the Avatar in chains and his father smiling proudly. War steals the ability to think of the future. Zuko saw refugees eating uncooked rice since they had no cooking equipment. He doesn’t like thinking about what it did to them. Zuko only wandered endlessly, then later threw himself into the middle of the conflict.

Zuko didn’t think he would live to the end of the war. He thought father- if not Azula- would kill him during the invasion. Living was the biggest shock of his life. Suddenly he had to make decisions and try and envision a future for himself and his nation. The latter was easy. No war, but peace. But thinking of what he wanted for himself and his own future was difficult. Zuko had never been raised to think of things like that. His future was whatever Ozai decided it would be. Then they crowned Zuko and everyone demanded that he start.

Looking at Azula now, he thinks that he might be able to see their future. Sitting in the gardens and eating their meals together, listening to the call of the cicadas and turtleducks. He can imagine her growing older, more mature, eventually developing grey hairs and an even prouder expression. Azula could be good at peace. If she tried. She could twist the minister’s arms and stronghold reluctant cities into maintaining their pledge of neutrality.

One day, they might sit at this very table with scrolls scrawled across instead of food, still talking about their latest plans. They might laugh. Secure in the knowledge that the nation will not plunge into war at a moment’s notice. He imagines Azula with her hair styled after senior royals, her robes pristine and carrying herself calmly. He imagines himself sitting across from her and drinking tea, reading aloud letters from Aang and the rest of his friends. Azula would tease him about the days when he foolishly chased after the Avatar, and he would joke in turn about the time she threw lightning at the very same person.

They will have nothing left to prove. To anyone. Maybe Zuko will be married by then, and maybe he won’t. Maybe Azula will decide to leave the palace and retire somewhere she doesn’t have to see his face and the blood that still stains the cobblestones. But that is all in the future.

Zuko reaches for the last of the fire flakes and thinks, finally, that he is on a path that he wants to reach the end of. There will be no more pain. Only his sister and his friends and his nation.

Mai finally leaves for Kyoshi.

“I delayed until Azula settled,” she explains in her usual flat tone. “She seems to be doing well. I’m glad.”

Zuko watches for traces of sarcasm but finds none. Mai’s expression is unchanged, but she watches Azula out of the corner of her eye. They were once friends. Zuko remembers them being inseparable, along with Ty Lee. Then they all changed. Mai and Ty Lee betrayed Azula, but Mai feels that Azula betrayed them first.

“She went down a road we couldn’t follow,” Mai said, then refused to explain. Zuko thinks he understands. They were all on their own paths. Some intersected – like Mai and Zuko’s. Others were too different. It is why Azula ended up alone.

“You could visit her,” he offers. He knows that some part of Mai still worries for Azula. “To see that she’s okay.”

Mai shakes her head. “She wouldn’t want that. It could cause a relapse.”

It strikes him, then. Mai really does care for Azula. Even after everything. If not as a friend, then as someone from her past. There are some people you can never really stop caring for. Even when you go separate ways, your lives are too deeply entwined. Zuko feels that way about Mai. She must feel similarly for Azula. They spent their childhoods together, and Mai was there for Azula when Zuko was banished. She saw the best and the worst of Azula. They know each other, down to their souls. Mai can never unlearn Azula. She knows too much to truly walk away.

“I trust you won’t do anything stupid while I’m gone,” Mai quips dryly. Zuko laughs, but she doesn’t laugh with him. Instead, she places a hand on his shoulder. “Be _safe_ , Zuko. Please.”

Zuko smiles back. “I’ll be okay, Mai. I swear.”

When Mai goes back, he does not know if she will ever return. She could stay on Kyoshi until the end of her days. Learning from the warriors, training them in return. Travelling with Ty Lee and building her own life away from the Fire Nation, away from her parents, away from Zuko. They are not at war anymore. Mai can go where she pleases. If she chooses to never come back, then there is nothing he can do to stop her.

Their childhood is over. Gone are the days of training together in the courtyard, then fighting together to free prisoners of war. He could beg her to stay. He could beg her to bring Ty Lee back from the Kyoshi Warriors, too, and reunite with Azula. He could force the continuation of the past. But he won’t. Everything must end, eventually. Otherwise the memories aren’t special. They’re just memories.

Mai’s eyes soften. “Good,” she says.

Some part of him thought she would never really leave. But Mai picks up her bags and walks out the palace gates without a backwards glance.

And that is that. The end of an era. Zuko waits until Mai is firmly out of sight, then turns back to his duties.

It’s not the end. Not for everything, and not until they decide. It’s only the closing of a chapter. Zuko allows himself to mourn a little. Nostalgia makes everything seem sweeter – even their constant arguing. They are not who they used to be and never will again. Zuko and Mai’s paths entwined, diverged, then entwined again. Maybe everything will come together at the end of the road. Maybe someday, everyone will reunite on a single path.

For now, all Zuko can do is smile. They have begun new lives. No longer at war, no longer living in fear of their families and of themselves. It is now up to them to decide what they want for themselves.

It’s not all tragic.

“Firelord Zuko!” a minister calls, then waits impatiently for Zuko to make his way over. “Your Majesty, you have a letter from General Fong in the Earth Kingdom.”

“Really?” Zuko takes the letter and turns it over in his palms. A quick lick of fire undoes the seal, and he flattens the scroll. Moments later, he is laughing loudly.

“What is it?” the minister inquires eagerly. “Good news?”

“Excellent news,” Zuko corrects, nearly dizzy with relief. “The negotiations have finished! We have terms for the war reparations. We have newly established territory lines. The other nations want to work with us. In another few years, we could even form an alliance! A coalition to keep all the nations in check.”

The minister gapes; stunned. Zuko empathises. He spins around and yells triumphantly. The letter doesn’t solve everything – the Fire Nation needs to continue building trust and making amends for the damage of the war. They need to finish returning homes and territories to the people of the occupied colonies and help reunite those separated by the fighting. There is still work to be done. Zuko could be doing it for the rest of his life. But it’s a starting point. A clear signal that the peace could truly _stay._

He isn’t the failure Firelord. He holds in his hands the best hope for the world they have had in over a hundred years. Things are _changing,_ finally. Someday the world might not hate the Fire Nation for their mistakes. Someday the Fire Nation may be able to reconcile their past of hatred with their future of hope.

There is the potential for change. For a new branch of history. That is all Zuko needs to feel assured that he did not take the throne in vain. Peace is difficult, but it is not an impossible task. The letter proved just that.

Zuko thinks of the war that runs through his family. The desire for it. The struggle for it. Warring against themselves and other nations, fighting just for the sake of fighting. For glory. For power. Zuko doesn’t visit his father anymore – it would do nothing but hurt him. Still, for a moment he considers showing Ozai the letter.

 _Look,_ he could say. _Look what I’ve done. Not everything has to be about power. We can do good things, too._

Ozai would only spit in his face or ignore his son. Zuko has learned enough to allow the whim to fade. It’s okay to want things that hurt you, but you need to learn to let it go. Some fantasies are made only to stay in your mind. Ozai will never repent, and he will never leave his cell. Even after seeing the devastation of war. This will not make him proud.

Regardless, Zuko is proud of himself. He smiles at the letter once more and feels, truly, like he is doing something for his nation. Finally a leader. Zuko is used to feeling ashamed and disgusted of himself, and desperate, but never proud. Never confident. But he _is,_ now, and isn’t that funny? He lost everything but gained even more in return.

He is the one person that no one ever wanted on the throne. That no one rooted for or expected. Even Zuko doubted himself, wondering if he could truly do a good job with the entire world against him and his decisions. _Should I just give up? Should I convince Uncle to leave retirement and take the throne instead?_

Now he holds proof that there is a future for his nation – with Zuko as the Firelord. It’s not much. Not compared to the immensity of the task still laying ahead of them. But it’s _something._ More than anyone has ever given to the nation. The hope for peace.

Zuko was terrified of recovering. He thought, _once the fear goes away, what is left?_

It felt like a betrayal of sorts. How dare he be happy when thousands of people died because of his family? Because of the stupid throne? Zuko remembers being thirteen and stumbling into a long-deserted temple. He smelled the skeletons before he saw them - and no one tells you about that. The smell. You think that bones would have no scent but they _do._ Calcium and musty air. He remembers stepping over the discarded bodies and throwing up. So many people dead. So many bodies abandoned without funeral rites, without any hope of re-joining their ancestors.

Mostly, Zuko thinks he was scared. His entire life revolved around being an outsider. The lonely and banished prince. What happens once you take that away? Once Zuko has friends and a throne and a place where he finally, _finally,_ belongs? 

He was scared to find out. He thought that he would somehow lose himself. That he would become someone unfamiliar, a stranger wearing a familiar skin. Now Zuko knows that he can breathe. Finally, he can relax. The pain was familiar and comfortable, but it was never meant to be the permanent state of his life. Things were always going to get better. If not as a child, then someday. 

He can leave the fear behind. Zuko is still Zuko, but more. Less afraid. More confident. Proud of himself and his nation and how far they are travelling into the future, together. He looks at his sister and knows that she was scared, too. Scared of who she was without their father. Without the endless rules of court and the restrictions upon her. When there is no longer anything telling you what you must be, the decision turns to you. But Azula took the chance. She came back with him from the hospital and decided to try living in the palace again, try being siblings again. She left her room for him.That alone speaks volumes. 

His journey to the throne was a brambling path that cut him at every step. But looking back, it was the easiest part. Getting power is hard. Keeping it is harder – just look at his family. Zuko was thrust onto the throne before he was ready. He doesn’t know why he thought he could the nation after being away from home for years. He nearly crumbled under the pressure. Zuko stopped eating, he stopped sleeping, and he stopped thinking about the future. The present was too overwhelming for that. Zuko almost abandoned his sister forever.

Now he has his throne, the faith of his people, a series of successful negotiations, and his sister by his side.

Zuko’s migraines haven’t stopped, and he still needs reminders to eat. The world still doesn’t trust the Fire Nation. Azula burns the lilies as often as she demands for them to be cared for, and there are days where she locks herself in her room and refuses to come out. Everyone is healing – the world included. Just because things aren’t perfect doesn’t mean things are bad, either. It’s just life.

Nothing can stay the same forever. Eventually Zuko will have to make way for the new generation, as the elders did for him. It’s the way of things. He and Azula will not be the leaders of the Fire Nation forever. Someone else will take their place, and they will be relegated to a page in the history books. A collection of anecdotes that historians think might be true. Will they be cursed? Will they call Zuko a weak leader who couldn’t secure peace for his nation, in the end, or will they say that he thrived?

Their childhood is over. No longer soldiers, no longer fighters. No more travelling on bisons to evade capture. The past is well and truly gone. Someday, all of this will become nothing but a story. The struggles of people long dead.

Zuko turns as Azula calls for him.

“Come on, Dum-Dum, you have a meeting!” She waits with her hands on her hips and an arrogant tilt of her head. A wave of affection through him.

“I’m coming,” he calls back, and Azula tuts but begins making her way back to the chambers. Someday all of this will be a story – him, Azula, their childhoods under the shadow of Ozai and the war. Zuko’s struggle in the early days of their reign. His reunion with Azula. It will all be a story.

He just hopes it’s a good one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my parting notes:
> 
> i realised towards the end that this is also a kind of coming-of-age for Zuko. he was overburdened and overwhelmed, but over the course of the fic he gradually learned how to adjust to his adult responsibilities and new role. so i wanted to wrap things up with part of that coming-of-age conclusion style, with Mai leaving and Zuko realising that the days of the war (and his childhood) are well and truly over, and that he can't keep trying to prolong them in his memories by clinging to the past. the war is over. his days of fear are gone. but he has a new future with his sister and his nation, and he can build something new from the rubble. he can finally leave the fear behind. i hope that thread didn't seem out of place for you guys! it's difficult to keep the flow of the story going when it's a long time between updates for me. 
> 
> i also wanted to leave things in a good place with Azula and Zuko. there was a bit of time between the previous chapter and this one, and things aren't perfect but they've reached kind of mutual understanding. as for Zuko - his eating habits aren't fully normal yet. he still struggles with some things and it still takes effort, but he is in a much healthier place than he was at the start of the fic. i wanted to show that not everything has to be fully fixed and fine by the end of a journey. recovery is continual, and that's okay!
> 
> i know some people would have preferred a more in-depth exploration of Zuko and Azula healing their relationship, but for me i think i wrote everything i set out to for this fic. it felt like the right time to end things, and the right way to do it before it just started dragging on. this was always focused on Zuko's emotional journey so i decided to leave some things just for the reader's imagination. i struggled to find the "perfect" way to end this fic but i eventually realised that i wouldn't be 100% satisfied no matter what i wrote, so i decided to just do my best and post the chapter. now we're at the end!
> 
> thanks so much for reading, everyone!! <333


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